Former US defense secretary and CIA director Leon Panetta joins CNN's Jim Acosta to discuss the possibility of another Trump presidency.

• NYC mayor: Lori Lightfoot's loss is 'warning sign' for US • Video: Bannon has a harsh message for Fox News at CPAC • Opinion: Florida man vs. Florida man

Foreign ministry condemns surprise visit by Mark Milley, dubbing it 'illegal', according to state media reports.

Super Bowl winners once went to Disney World to celebrate their victories, but Saturday Night Live has occasionally offered another option. Last night, Travis Kelce—the Kansas City Chiefs tight end and two-time Super Bowl champion—joined the likes of the quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, each of whom hosted the sketch show shortly after they won the big game. Kelce’s towering athletic presence, a rarity on the SNL stage, gave the show an opportunity to examine masculinity from various angles, including with a surprisingly emotional tenor.

In the pretaped commercial spoof “Straight Male Friend,” Bowen Yang played a gay man overwhelmed by the financial and emotional demands of his friendships with straight women. He touted the relief he’d discovered from being pals with a straight man, played with sincerity by Kelce. Yang praised this form of “low-effort, low-stakes relationship that requires no emotional commitment, no financial investment, and, other than the occasional video-game-related outburst, no drama.”

On the surface, the ad seemed to be yet another send-up of men—similar to recent sketches such as the infantilizing “Old Enough! Longterm Boyfriends!” and the acerbic “Big Penis Therapy.” But “Straight Male Friend,” which Yang co-wrote with Streeter Seidell and Alex English, captured the isolating norms that contribute to toxic masculinity with an earnestness that augmented its comedic beats. At one point, Kelce mentioned that his father “died last week,” eliciting shocked concern from Yang. But Kelce brushed off the difficult experience, later apologizing for “being a pussy” about it.

Thanks to the heartfelt, almost tender way Kelce played the straight male friend, who seemed cocooned in his own flat, affectless world, and the warmth Yang and his writing team lent the sketch, “Straight Male Friend” found a more poignant way to satirize straight men—including the social conditions that can make it difficult for them to develop and sustain meaningful friendships. Despite its parodic framing, the sketch depicted Kelce’s character’s life earnestly, making clearer the consequences of isolation and the emotional restrictions society places on men.

SNL has joked about straight men frequently of late, often deploying a mocking tone. “Old Enough! Longterm Boyfriends!” was a fake American spin-off of the hit Japanese reality show Old Enough!, which follows toddlers as they go on errands by themselves; the update chose to shadow “an equally helpless group.” In equating men with children, the sketch—which had male cast members (Mikey Day, Kenan Thompson) playing their adult men as wide-eyed and helpless—took on a surreal, exaggerated quality. Similarly, last year’s commercial spoof “Man Park” advertised recreational facilities akin to dog parks for straight men in need of male friends; in it, girlfriends and wives watched, relieved, as their partners bounded around like canines. As the narrator put it, “It’s not their fault masculinity makes intimacy so hard.”

Yet another recent sketch, “Big Penis Therapy,” incisively tackled the harm that men’s unaddressed issues can cause. A woman (Amy Schumer) convinced her “toxic as a mug” partner, Glenn (Andrew Dismukes), to go to therapy by explaining that it is for men with big penises. Making emotional vulnerability more palatable for Glenn had an outcome that was both juvenile and effective: Although many of Glenn’s male co-workers mocked him for going to therapy at first, they eventually grew envious when he showed off the toy badge he’d earned after six months. If therapy won’t unilaterally solve the problem of angry young men, the sketch suggests, it’s at least a start—but getting more men to take advantage of that resource remains a substantial hurdle. (According to a CDC survey, women in the U.S. are more likely than men to seek treatment for mental-health issues.) “Straight Male Friend” insinuated as much, closing with a tagline that explained that these types of men can be found everywhere … except therapy. The slippage between what felt satirical and what simply felt true gave SNL’s newest sketch on the topic a different edge.

[Read: The SNL sketch that perfectly mocks our upside-down reality]

One misstep last night underscored the straightforward but effective approach that “Straight Male Friend” took. “Garrett From Hinge” used a wildly unfocused premise to explore another kind of straight man—an angry one. Yang played a Hinge user who’d been ditched at the last minute and left looking like a “sucka.” He tracked down the woman he was supposed to meet up with (Heidi Gardner) and the man she ditched him for (Kelce), broke into her apartment, and demanded answers. In turns that felt more and more bizarre, Garrett repeatedly excused himself to the bathroom, where he told himself that he wasn’t going to kill them. The sketch reached for a point about cringe men and Garrett’s potential for violence, but it felt vague and underdeveloped. If “Straight Male Friend” was a sort of preview of what men need, “Garrett From Hinge” uncomfortably revealed the dark turn things can take when they don’t get it. Although both sketches caricatured the same issue, Yang showed an important possibility with the former: the deeper humor that results from infusing a comedic perspective with a bit of heart.

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.

Good morning, and welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic staffer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

Today’s special guest is the Atlantic managing editor Bhumika Tharoor. When she’s not rewatching Golden Girls, Bhumi is dancing to bachata music, reading obituaries that range from heartbreaking to hilarious, and getting a very nontraditional refresher in AP Lit.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

Judy Blume goes all the way. What losing my two children taught me about grief The aftermath of a mass slaughter at the zoo

The Culture Survey: Bhumika Tharoor

The upcoming entertainment event I’m most looking forward to: Watching the final season of Succession while looking out for any additional Atlantic references! And then reading Megan Garber’s essays on the show. [Related: The bodily horrors of Succession]

A quiet song that I love, and a loud song that I love: “Vente Negra” by Habana con Kola is a quiet song that mesmerized me when I first heard it during a night out dancing. It is coziness in sound form: a salsa song that is smooth at the intro and then expands, engulfing you into the melody. It is both compelling and reassuring. I’ve fallen in love with this song and you must listen to it. You’re welcome.

I use music to shake me out of occasional inertia, so I have a huge selection of loud songs to get me going. Currently, it’s “Boom Padi” by Shreya Ghoshal (and performed by Bollywood icon Madhuri Dixit Nene!). It’s a garba song, which is a type of music and dance from my family’s home state of Gujarat in India. The song features an intense dhol (a percussion instrument) that creates a relentless, rhythmic electricity. Running is not in my constitution, but if I ran, it would be to this.

A painting, sculpture, or other piece of visual art that I cherish: It’s called Rabbit in a Snowstorm: a painting on a giant canvas with textured gradations of white, offering a sense of both immensity and depth. You’re supposed to behold it and contemplate your solitude in a bleak, unsentimental universe. And you’re supposed to be contemplating these things in the penthouse of a skyscraper that looms above your sprawling gangland empire.

I should mention at this point that Rabbit in a Snowstorm is a fictional piece of art found within the masterful piece of art that is Marvel’s Daredevil TV series. And its beholder—the bald, brooding, brutish Kingpin, played by Vincent D’Onofrio—is one of the best portrayals of a comic-book villain that I have seen (aside from Heath Ledger’s Joker, of course). You can currently stream the first three seasons on Disney+, and a new Daredevil series is expected in spring 2024. [Related: Daredevil: A long-form approach to comic-book television]

Something I recently rewatched, reread, or otherwise revisited: I am besotted with journalistic profiles, and think often about the skilled observations and deftness of touch required to write good ones. This fascination leads me to perhaps a peculiar fondness for reading obituaries, which could be considered mini-profiles. Here are a couple I’ve loved and keep revisiting:

Three sisters from the Mirabal family are widely credited with igniting the movement that eventually toppled the Dominican Republic’s vicious dictator Rafael Trujillo. The sisters spent their lives as members of the resistance movement against Trujillo—until he ordered their assassinations as a consequence of their activism and, potentially,  spurned lust. The fourth and only surviving sister, Dedé, carried forward her sisters’ legacy and raised her and her sisters’ children, some of whom are now politicians in the DR. This is her obituary. This obituary for a glorious woman named Renay Mandel Corren, however, had me giggling loudly when I first read it, and every subsequent time I’ve read it, too. It is terrifically hilarious and I wish I knew this incredible lady, as well as her son, who wrote it.

A song I’ll always dance to: I will instantly dance to bachata music. I love it all but am partial to traditional bachata, especially the classics. Some favorites, if you’re looking for a good time: The guitar in “Loco de Amor” by Luis Vargas is guaranteed to set your feet loose; “Si Tú Me Dices Ven” and “Esa Novia Mía” sung by Zacarías Ferreira are best danced to while belting the lyrics until your voice turns raspy like his.

An album I fired up again recently: Jagged Little Thrill, by Jagged Edge. And Jasmine Sandlas’s What’s in a Name? So good!

A favorite story I’ve read in The Atlantic: It’s impossible to select just one story. Here are a few, but please visit TheAtlantic.com for much more.

“30 Years Ago, Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact,” by Melissa Fay Greene, took me down a tragic, haunting rabbit hole I didn’t know I needed to go down.  

Adam Harris’s heartbreaking story of the scholar Thea Hunter exposed the core of the exploitation that women of color experience in academia.

Sam Quinones’s deeply reported story of those suffering in America’s catastrophic meth epidemic: “Crystal meth is in some ways a metaphor for our times—times of anomie and isolation, of paranoia and delusion, of communities coming apart.”

Frederick Douglass on impartial suffrage, a timeless and relevant piece from our rich archives that is worth revisiting regularly.

A YouTuber, TikToker, Twitch streamer, or other online creator that I’m a fan of: I love following funny people and reading funny things (like this newsletter, Famous People, by Kaitlyn Tiffany and Lizzie Plaugic). Jahkara Smith (who goes by SailorJ on YouTube and SlaylerJ on Twitter) creates hilarious drunk book reviews that mock the best-of-AP-English list, lighting up The Odyssey, The Taming of the Shrew, Pride and Prejudice, and other fixtures of the canon. There’s hilarity, there’s razor-sharp social commentary, and it’s all casually brilliant.

Something delightful introduced to me by a kid in my life: The kid in my life is my 16-month-old daughter, Kahaani, and she has somehow failed to introduce me to any particularly sophisticated cultural delights, so I’ll have to have a conversation with her about that. However, she is a big fan of “La Vaca Lola,” a song about a cow that has a head and a tail and says “moo.” It is delightful, if only because it leads to her squealing with joy and doing her patented wiggle-dance. Kahaani means “story” in Hindi and a number of other Indian languages, and though she is not yet literate, the one she is currently writing is my favorite.

Things that are making me laugh: Comedians Hasan Minhaj, Nimesh Patel, Matt Rife, and Akaash Singh.

A good recommendation I recently received: I have a cousin who fostered my love of words and good writing. For decades we have regularly tossed each other links to stories, artful turns of phrase, quality repartee, and examples of lovely writing in the wild. He recently sent me this piercing story by Audrey Wollen called “Not to Be,” in The New York Review of Books, that shook me. I apologize for the sharp pivot to dark topics—death and euthanasia—but I’m always impressed by writers who force us to face the big, heavy, unknowable things with elegance and clarity.

The last piece of journalism/arts/culture/entertainment that made me cry: Caitlin Dickerson wrote the definitive investigation into the Trump administration’s family-separation policy, and I can’t recall having such a visceral reaction to any other piece of writing in quite some time. Any cruel act visited upon a baby or toddler is immensely enraging. [Related: “We need to take away children”]

A poem, or line of poetry, that I return to: “… That is why the bird sings its songs into the world as though it were singing into it inner self, that’s why we take a birdsong into our own inner selves so easily, it seems to us that we translate it fully, with no remainder, into our feelings; a birdsong can even, for a moment, make the whole world into a sky within us, because we feel that the bird does not distinguish between its heart and the world’s.”

— from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Note on Birds”

Read past editions of the Culture Survey with Amanda Mull, Megan Garber, Helen Lewis, Jane Yong Kim, Clint Smith, John Hendrickson, Gal Beckerman, Kate Lindsay, Xochitl Gonzalez, Spencer Kornhaber, Jenisha Watts, David French, Shirley Li, David Sims, Lenika Cruz, Jordan Calhoun, Hannah Giorgis, and Sophie Gilbert.

The Week Ahead

Old Babes in the Wood: Stories, the latest short-fiction collection by The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood (on sale Tuesday) Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, a meditation on time by the bestselling author of How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell (on sale Tuesday) Luther: The Fallen Sun, in which Idris Elba stars as the London police detective John Luther, who breaks out of prison to hunt down a serial killer (begins streaming on Netflix Friday)

Essay

TaskmasterSuperMax+

The Game Show That Parodies Your To-Do List

By Chris Karnadi

Imagine you are sternly handed an assignment: Express appreciation for your boss in the most meaningful way possible. The boss will determine who, out of several people, did it best. How would you approach the task?

In one episode of Taskmaster, a British game show entering its 15th season this spring, contestants had 30 minutes to figure this out. In the show, the authoritarian Taskmaster (the actor Greg Davies) gives five contestants—mostly British comedians—open-ended objectives via his demure assistant, Alex Horne. Davies then awards points for how well competitors complete the goals. The tasks themselves—make a massive block of ice disappear the fastest, run the farthest while making a continuous noise—are intentionally absurd, which means the solutions are too. This simple premise has achieved immense popularity: Although a 2018 American spin-off was short-lived, the British version has a significant overseas audience via its YouTube channel, which has regularly amassed more than 10 million views a month in recent years, mostly from watchers in the U.S.

Read the full article.

More in Culture

The movie that helped Kazuo Ishiguro make sense of the world Jazz just lost one of its all-time greats. Creed III and the power of a worthy opponent What ballet taught me about my body Daisy Jones and the trap of the love triangle 20 biopics that are actually worth watching You should be reading Sebastian Barry.

Catch Up on The Atlantic

The FBI desperately wants to let Trump off the hook. The lab leak will haunt us forever. No one really knows how much COVID is silently spreading … again.

Photo Album

People watch the northern lights above central Stockholm, Sweden, on February 27, 2023. (Alo Lorestani / TT News Agency / Reuters)

Scroll through photos of the week, including the northern lights above Stockholm and a field of lava in San Juan Parangaricutiro, Mexico.

Kelli María Korducki contributed to this newsletter.

Explore all of our newsletters.

While the international community was focused on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, inspectors from the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), discovered uranium residue enriched to 84 percent in Iranian centrifuge cascades. Weapons-grade fissile material is typically characterized as uranium enriched to 90 percent, but it is worth recalling that the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945 was a fission weapon enriched to an average of 80 percent. The Iranians may claim that they are not enriching beyond 60 percent, and that these are mere particles, but the discovery should set off alarm bells.

It is a reminder that Iran has achieved the capacity to produce weapons-grade material very quickly. Enriching to 60 percent—something that the IAEA’s director, Rafael Grossi, says has “no justification for civilian purposes”—has already put the Iranians in that position. Granted, creating weapons-grade fissile material is not the same as having a bomb, but it is the most important element needed for bomb-making. The IAEA may not know yet whether the 84 percent is simply a limited residue from the cascades or whether this was a deliberate move by the Iranians to enrich to near weapons-grade. But we do know that, for the second time in a month, Iran has engaged in suspicious activity at an enrichment site. At Fordow, the Iranians connected two clusters of advanced centrifuges enriching uranium to 60 percent and did not inform the IAEA that it had done so. This is contrary to their obligations under the terms of the nuclear-nonproliferation treaty. Now there is also the 84 percent finding.

Regardless of the Iranian explanation, Iran is drawing closer to enriching to weapons-grade, and on its current pace could easily accumulate 10 bombs’ worth of fissile material enriched to 60 percent by the end of this year. And a senior defense official this week suggested that it would take the Iranians less than two weeks to make such material weapons-grade. Two implications of this emerging reality need to be considered. First, the Iranians are acting as if enriching to near weapons-grade and accumulating large amounts of fissile material pose no risk to them. And second, the idea that Israel will sit back and not act against what its leaders view as an existential threat is an illusion.

[Mary Louise Kelly: Why I went to Iran]

Israel may be preoccupied with the Netanyahu government’s judicial-overhaul plan and the growing levels of violence with the Palestinians, but Israeli leaders from across the political spectrum share the prime minister’s concerns about the quantity of bomb-making fissile material that Iran is accumulating and the hardening of its nuclear infrastructure, which will make it more and more difficult for Israel to destroy. Benjamin Netanyahu has already told U.S. officials and French President Emmanuel Macron that if nothing is done soon to stop the advance of the Iranian nuclear program, Israel will have no choice but to attack.

The IAEA’s discovery of the enriched materials will only confirm the deepening Israeli belief that the current approach of the U.S. and its allies will eventually result in Iran getting a bomb, and that, regardless of statements to the contrary, America and the international community are prepared to live with that outcome. Israel, however, is not.

If the Biden administration wants to force the Iranians to recognize the dangerous risk they are running and convince the Israelis that it has a way to deter the Iranians from advancing their program, it must respond to the recent revelation. The Iranians, the Israelis, and others in the region will certainly be watching to see what the U.S. does.

To be effective, that response should be shaped by a four-part strategy. First, the Biden administration must alter its declaratory policy. Saying that “every option remains on the table,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken did in an interview, impresses no one, least of all the Iranians. Instead, Blinken or President Joe Biden should announce that although the U.S. favors diplomacy for resolving the threat of the Iranian nuclear program, the Iranians continue to demonstrate that they don’t; instead, their actions are drawing them closer and closer to a bomb, something that the U.S. has pledged to prevent, and Iran must understand that its actions jeopardize its entire nuclear infrastructure, including parts that could in theory be used for civilian energy purposes. Declaring this would signal that the U.S. is beginning to prepare the American public and the international community for possible military action against Iran’s nuclear program.

[Eric Schlosser: The greatest nuclear threat we face is a Russian victory]

Second, to give these words force, the Iranians need to see the U.S. rehearsing its own air-to-ground attacks in exercises in the region. The recent major joint exercise with Israel was a good first step. It needs to be repeated. Parallel to this, the Biden administration should be visibly engaging with the Israelis, Saudis, Emiratis, and others on consultations and exercises designed to blunt any possible Iranian attacks against those countries. This would demonstrate that the administration is not only preparing for a possible attack, but also anticipating how the Iranians might retaliate against American allies in the region—and how the U.S. has planned to foil that.    

Third, Tehran is under two misapprehensions: It does not believe that we will act militarily against Iran, and it thinks we will also stop the Israelis from doing so. The administration can counter that impression by providing material and munitions that would make any Israeli strikes more effective. Given the distances involved and the lack of access to forward bases, Israel needs refueling tankers so that it can hit fortified Iranian targets multiple times. It has contracted for four Boeing KC-46A air tankers, but the first is not scheduled for delivery until late 2025. The Biden administration can ensure that the Israelis are first in line, enabling tankers to arrive this year. The U.S. can also provide more powerful munitions than the ones Israel currently has for collapsing hardened targets. This unusual move of providing Israel with such specific military assistance would send a message loud and clear: Far from holding the Israelis back, the U.S. will support them.

Fourth, the Biden administration must also act in a way that is out of character in Iranian eyes. Over the past month, America’s forces in Syria were targeted twice by Iranian Shiite-militia proxies. In neither case did the U.S. retaliate. The Iranians need to see something they do not expect—a military response showing that whatever constraints were previously observed now no longer apply. Proxy attacks must be answered, without hesitation and disproportionately. Such action could include, for example, unacknowledged U.S. air strikes on the camps in Iran where these militias are trained. If the U.S. does not claim responsibility, the Iranians would not be forced to respond—but they would get the point.

If the U.S. adopts all of these measures, the Iranians would take notice. The aim would be to get the Iranians to stop the advance of their nuclear-enrichment program, and in so doing reopen the possibility of a diplomatic pathway to reverse it.

[Roya Hakakian: Ukrainians and Iranians have the same enemy. They should have the same ally.]

Is such an approach free of risk? No. Iran may test us to see how serious we are. The Islamic Republic’s leaders may say that they will walk away from the nonproliferation treaty, and so deny the IAEA any access at all. But this much is certain: For the U.S. to hold to the current policy will do nothing to alter Iran’s progress toward the moment when it can choose to go for a bomb—and Israel is simply not going to wait for that.

Without a clear show of resolve by the U.S. to act on its own behalf, unilateral Israeli strikes on the Iranian nuclear program will trigger Hezbollah and maybe Hamas missile attacks on Israel, potentially numbering thousands per day. Iran itself may launch retaliatory attacks against the Saudis and other regional adversaries, in an effort to show that if Iran pays a price, everyone will pay a price. If the Biden administration does not change course, there is a good chance it will face a regional conflict in the Middle East.

To avoid a war with a threatening adversary, that adversary has to believe you will use force. A clear signal of a new American approach may now be essential not only to persuade the Iranians to stop their advance toward a nuclear weapon, but also to show China and Russia that the U.S. is capable of dealing with multiple threats at once and that it has the will to do so. As well as deterring the Iranians, the Biden administration can alter the calculus of the Chinese and Russians over expansionist plans in other parts of the world.

America's least-visited national park is quite a distance from mainland US shores. Almost 5,000 miles away, in fact.

Tokyo said there were no flaws in criminal proceedings against Ridge Alkonis, 34, who was convicted of a fatal car crash in 2021, but criticism ...

The Mexican wolf population in the United States surpassed 200 individuals in 2022, federal officials announced -- a stunning recovery for a species that nearly went extinct, with just seven known wolves in existence in the late 1970s.

A short clip of Zelensky's remarks about the US fighting in Ukraine has gone viral. CNN's Daniel Dale breaks down why the dramatic excerpt is not what it seems.