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The Best Esquire Stories of 2023

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There’s a growing movement among religious leaders to use psychedelics like psilocybin to deepe

There’s a growing movement among religious leaders to use psychedelics like psilocybin to deepen their faith. The author attended a secret ceremony to find out whether it works. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( [God, Magic Mushrooms, and Me]( God, Magic Mushrooms, and Me Years after my evolution from confused teen to confident nonchurchgoer, my wife, Sonya, and I took our kids one Easter to a local Congregational church, more in search of community than anything else. We lacked the fervency of the faithful, but we liked that the church had been part of the abolition movement and remained committed to change in the twenty-first century, and we became regulars. I didn’t know what I believed. My secularism now seemed as naive as my childlike trust in Jesus. I felt something when I went to church, a warmth that spread from my heart and buoyed me. It also felt silly to pray aloud, and as I sat in the pews, I chose not to dwell on whether I believed the biblical stories any more than I had in college. I read deeper and found the Gospel of Thomas, who wrote that the way to honor God is to listen to and take seriously your life’s calling. “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you,” Jesus says in Thomas’s gospel. “If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” When the pastor asked last year if I would become a deacon—a lay leader at the church— I almost couldn’t believe it as I said it, but I accepted. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( [Ashton Kutcher Has Been Through It]( Ashton Kutcher Has Been Through It Twenty-six years ago, Ashton Kutcher made his way from Iowa to New York City with a hundred dollars in his pocket and not one single clue about what he was getting into. The first time he went to a club—any club, ever, at the now defunct Chaos on Broome and West Broadway in SoHo—he spied Prince sitting behind a velvet rope in a VIP area. But Kutcher had never seen a velvet VIP rope before and didn’t grasp that it was supposed to be a barrier. So he stepped right over it to say hi to one of his heroes. His killer opening line? “You’re from Minnesota, and I’m from Iowa.” Security helped escort him right back to his side of the rope. Kutcher stands up from our table at lunch to reenact the scene. His long limbs swing dramatically over the imaginary rope, and he shakes my hand—I am playing the part of the Purple One—and recalls, with a sheepish grin, his equally memorable parting statement: “Go Vikings.” [Read the Full Story]( [A Good Sperm Donor Is Hard to Find]( A Good Sperm Donor Is Hard to Find Early last year, my partner and I decided it was finally time to start a family. We had already tempted those pesky fertility gods by daring to wait until we were almost (gasp!) 35—after which any pregnancy would be considered by our fine medical professionals to be a geriatric pregnancy—and we still needed to factor in additional time to find some sperm. They say certain things take longer when you’re queer. This is especially true when it comes to forming a family: our plumbing prevents a speedy and seamless experience. We couldn’t delay any longer. One cold January afternoon, for the first time, we logged onto the database of one of a handful of cryobanks our doctor had recommended. We decided to use a cryobank because that’s what many of our queer friends had done, and because our doctor said it required a lot less legwork than using a known donor—fertility lingo for a friend who loans you a few of his swimmers. It seemed like the “normal” thing to do, and normal seemed like a nice start to our journey through the world of queer parenthood. [Read the Full Story]( [In the War Room with Steve Bannon]( In the War Room with Steve Bannon "Donald Trump won the 2020 election,” Steve Bannon pronounces. “Of that there is not even a question." Obviously you expect me not to agree with you, I say. “Of course I expect you not to agree with me,” he says. “And I’m also not looking for you to agree with me. And I also don’t give a fuck who in the mainstream media agrees or disagrees with me.” And so off we go—about this and about Covid (the Bannon view: “It’s 100 percent a bioweapon—fucking not even a question”) and about vaccines (“I would never in ten million years get this vaccine,” Bannon says, and asks if I would; I simply hand him my vax card, which he looks at with apparent amazement: “I’ve never . . .”) and about what I view—but naturally Bannon doesn’t—as his incessant anti-Semitic dog-whistling. At one point, he rhapsodizes about the range of information available to people these days. Or misinformation, I say. [Read the Full Story]( [Behind the Scenes of Barack Obama’s Reading Lists]( Behind the Scenes of Barack Obama’s Reading Lists As a journalist covering the book-publishing industry, when an editor reaches out to me about a story, it’s usually because there’s something dark lurking under the cover. The (now failed) Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster merger was a messy game of corporate maneuvers with the potential to leave employees and authors in the dust. The New York Times best-seller list is calculated with a secret formula that authors and publishers regularly attempt to cheat. I usually have anonymous sources falling all over themselves to spill industry secrets, so you can imagine that when I was assigned to investigate the methodology behind Barack Obama’s annual lists of book recommendations, I set out to expose a secret apparatus of industry shenanigans. What I found was much more shocking. [Read the Full Story]( [Persecution in the Name of the Lord]( Persecution in the Name of the Lord Journey Mueller wasn't ready to come out. At eighteen, the Colorado Christian University freshman had only just admitted to herself that she liked women. But one autumn day in 2017, two of her roommates—women she considered her closest friends —tried to pry the secret from her. When Journey evaded their questions, they pelted her with more. When she tried to leave her dorm suite, they physically blocked the door, she later said in a sworn legal declaration. When she held her tongue, they did the talking, piecing together a narrative that was spot-on: That fall, Journey’s lesbian friend Casey had been a frequent visitor, taking Journey away from campus for hours. What were they doing? Were they dating? Was Journey gay? Journey stood frozen before her friends, one hand touching her cross necklace. With long, chestnut hair framing her youthful face, flushed cheeks, and piercing eyes, she resembled a teenage Kristen Stewart. Journey hadn’t told anyone about the surprising turn her romantic life had taken with Casey’s arrival. (Casey is a pseudonym to protect their privacy; they now use gender- neutral pronouns.) She had admired Casey since high school—how they always seemed spirited and flirtatious, comfortable in their own skin. She loved Casey’s explosive laugh and theatrical personality. Before, Journey had flirted tentatively with Casey, but the anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs of her conservative Christian community held her back. Now in college, Journey was exploring her identity and felt her attraction to Casey rekindle. [Read the Full Story]( [LiveIntent Logo]( [AdChoices Logo]( [How satisfied are you with the content of this newsletter?]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice]( | [CA Notice at Collection]( Esquire is a publication of Hearst Magazines. ©2023 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This email was sent by Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019-3779

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