This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week I asked, “Why are men and boys struggling? What should we do about it?” No other question has elicited so many responses, and they were especially varied, so this is a long edition.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Every nation has fringe candidates and public spectacles in its political life, but today, the American right celebrates the abandonment of dignity and virtue.First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
The inevitable indictment of Donald Trump
Medium COVID could be the most dangerous COVID.

From a Darwinian perspective, human reproduction is pretty idiotic. “We are terrible at getting pregnant,” writes the American-born British archaeologist Brenna Hassett, “then when we do we undercook the baby and end up with a ridiculously helpless infant.” That doesn’t even account for the nightmare of human childbirth, the biological equivalent of the old sofa-in-the-stairwell dilemma. Then there’s the absurdly long time it takes us to reach maturity.

I am still afraid of catching COVID. As a young, healthy, bivalently boosted physician, I no longer worry that I’ll end up strapped to a ventilator, but it does seem plausible that even a mild case of the disease could shorten my life, or leave me with chronic fatigue, breathing trouble, and brain fog. Roughly one in 10 Americans appears to share my concern, including plenty of doctors.

Pop-culture gossip is like catnip for Saturday Night Live. Celebrity misbehavior has fueled many, many of the show’s sketches over the years—some of them quick-witted and clever, some of them bizarre duds. But not all celebrity news is created equal: There’s Will Smith’s Oscars slap, and then there’s the befuddling recent fallout of the YouTube stars the Try Guys.

On Saturday, the Ukrainians hit the Kerch Strait Bridge, which leads from Russia to Crimea, with something—a missile, explosives planted by naval commandos, a truck laden with explosives. No one who knows is saying for sure. As is the way of military commentary in 2022, experts—real, fake, self-proclaimed—are studying the imagery floating around Twitter and insisting that they know just what happened.