Earlier today, The New York Times broke some startling news about a presidential candidate. According to a 2012 deposition, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once suffered from, in his own words, “a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.” The vague yet alarming description could apply to any number of parasitic ailments, among them angiostrongyliasis, baylisascariasis, toxocariasis, strongyloidiasis, and trichinosis.

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Donald Trump is in his third week on trial in New York, where he faces 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.

Nearly 20 years ago, my high-school calculus teacher introduced me to a book that would, although I didn’t realize it at the time, permanently reframe the way I thought about music. Written by the journalist Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life was a study of the 1980s independent-music landscape—of bands that had unconsciously responded to the commercialism found on MTV and mainstream rock radio by going underground, and by getting very weird.

Here is a nonexhaustive list of objects Apple recently pulverized with a menacing hydraulic crusher: a trumpet, a piano, a turntable, a sculpted bust, lots and lots of paint, video-game controllers.
These are all shown being demolished in the company’s new iPad commercial, a minute-long spot titled “Crush!” The items are arranged on a platform beneath a slowly descending enormous metal block, then trash-compactored out of existence in a violent symphony of crunching.

Scapegoating is one of humankind’s primal rituals, dating back to the Book of Leviticus, in which God commanded the prophet Aaron to lay hands on a goat, confess the sins of his tribe, and then send the animal into the desert. Throughout centuries and across cultures, the historian René Girard once argued, warring factions have settled disputes by agreeing upon a figure to collectively blame—a resolution that is ugly and unfair but, more than anything, cathartic.

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.
As the Israel-Hamas war continues, breathless headlines sometimes conceal more than they reveal.
But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
David A. Graham: “The Stormy Daniels testimony spotlights Trump’s misogyny.

Donald Trump has often loved to talk about his sexual prowess. He boasted to Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush about grabbing women’s crotches nonconsensually. He called the New York Post and begged them to run a headline bragging that Marla Maples, then his girlfriend and later his second wife, considered their relationship the “Best Sex I’ve Ever Had!” He bragged that he had so much sex that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases was “my personal Vietnam.

Everyone, for so long, has been worried about the honeybees. Governments, celebrities, social-media users, small businesses, multinational conglomerates—in the two decades or so since news emerged that American honeybees were disappearing, all manner of entities with a platform or a wallet have taken up and abandoned countless other causes, but they can’t quit trying to save the bees.
In 2022, at least 18 states enacted bee-related legislation.

When George Schappell came out as transgender in 2007, he joined a population at the center of medical and ethical controversy. Schappell was used to this. He had been born in West Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1961 with the left side of his face, some of his skull, and a portion of his brain conjoined with those of his sister, Lori. Following doctors’ advice, their parents put them in an institution for children with intellectual disabilities.

The guardian of the special relationship—the historical but possibly mythical bond between the United States and the United Kingdom—is a short woman with discerning blue eyes and a penchant for glittering headbands.
The role of an ambassador has always been strange. They’re expected to be fun—to flit around comfortably at galas and cocktail parties, charming guests and making inroads with important people while waiters weave around with platters of deviled eggs.