America is a nation fixated on winning. We love success stories. We love to see ourselves as a superpower. We love getting Ws. But how do we define winning? Is it about money, productivity, and military might? Or is there a scoreboard that is both more elemental and monumental—one that holds the only metric that really matters? Depending on your answer, you’ll either be tired of all the winning or tired of all the dying. Derek Thompson in The Atlantic (Free Article): America Fails the Civilization Test. “Imagine I offered you a pill and told you that taking this mystery medication would have two effects. First, it would increase your disposable income by almost half. Second, it would double your odds of dying in the next 365 days. To be an average American is to fill a lifetime prescription of that medication and take the pill nightly … When graded on a curve against its peer nations, [America] is failing. The U.S. mortality rate is much higher, at almost every age, than that of most of Europe, Japan, and Australia.” (But at least we’re finally getting control of all those life-threatening library books and drag shows…)

+ “For years, the conventional wisdom has been that a lack of sex-specific health research mainly hurts women and gender minorities. While those concerns are real, a closer look at longevity data tells a more complicated story. Across the life span – from infancy to the teen years, midlife and old age – the risk of death at every age is higher for boys and men than for girls and women.” WaPo (Free Article): A silent crisis in men’s health gets worse.