Welcome to Bw Reads, our weekend newsletter featuring one great magazine story from Bloomberg Businessweek. Strike that. Today we’re featuring one great series of stories. It’s about the role of masculinity in US culture today, and the men and boys who are deeply troubled about their place in the world. You can find all the articles here.

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Won’t somebody please think of the men? Actually, it turns out that men, their needs and their insecurities are getting an awful lot of attention these days. From the “manosphere” of bro podcasters partially credited with reelecting Donald Trump to the worrying decline in male enrollment rates at colleges to all the buzz about Netflix’s powerful four-part youth crime drama Adolescence, men and their problems are (again) at the white-hot center of cultural discourse.

But while masculinity is back in fashion and remains at the pinnacle of global finance, politics and culture, men are still deeply troubled about their place in the world. Data shows that boys and young men are struggling in school and are not well positioned for jobs in growing industries. They’re also desperately searching for new role models and fashion icons. And in the most undignified blow, men are having to make room on a perch they once thoroughly dominated: the bench press at the local gym.

Who’s thinking of the men? With this special section of Bloomberg Businessweek, someone finally is.

• The second Trump administration’s agenda to date has been, in a word, masculinist. And yet, Donald Trump and the men in his inner circle—Elon Musk, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and the rest—don’t themselves recall traditional American masculine archetypes. Rachel Giese, the author of Boys: What It Means to Become a Man, takes a look at the manosphere in this political moment.

• John Shahidi is the man who “helped turn viewers into voters,” in the words of one Trump adviser. Sarah Frier writes about how Shahidi, an early maker of mobile apps, games and digital fan clubs, became the connection between the political campaign and the digital media world inhabited by young men.

• Men opting out of college isn’t a new phenomenon: Women have outnumbered men in undergraduate enrollment for about 40 years. But the gap is widening, and that’s led to other declines in employment, earnings and family formation. Francesca Maglione writes about one Ohio community that’s trying to boost male enrollment, or at least set students on a better path to work.

Related: Eight Charts Show Men Are Falling Behind, From Classrooms to Careers

Illustration by Companion — Platform

• If you’ve noticed a certain look common to the manosphere, you’re not mistaken. Derek Guy, the men’s fashion commentator who’s almost inescapable on X, has noticed too and has written a visual guide to the alpha male aesthetic.

• Also inescapable lately has been discussion of the Netflix series Adolescence. The show’s co-creator Jack Thorne sat down with Businessweek editors to talk about the show’s view of kids and social media, and the vulnerability of boys to extremist online subcultures that promote a toxic brand of masculinity.

• Gyms across the country are transforming to attract an increasingly muscle-obsessed population, much of it female. The message from Americans is simple: Jogging on a treadmill or sweating over a stationary bike in a room full of strangers is out; moving heavy objects is in. Redd Brown writes about the less-macho fitness center.

Photographer: Adrian Cuerdo for Bloomberg Businessweek; set stylist: Victor Lopez

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