Hi folks. It’s been an exciting week at The Free Press. If you missed our big announcement, you can read all about it here. It’s a new chapter for The Free Press: same mission, much bigger stage.

You may have also noticed that we took down the paywall this week. That means that until Sunday, all of our content—Columns! Livestreams! Podcasts!—is available to anyone with a registered account, free of charge.

So: You’ve gotten a taste of all we have to offer. But paid subscribers get access to our journalism every day of the week, as well as early access to our livestreams and events—like our next one, in New York on October 22, where I’ll be sitting down with psychologist Jonathan Haidt to discuss how to raise children in the digital age.

Next week, the paywall returns. You know what that means:

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Until then: Enjoy my picks from an absolutely banner week here at The FP.

Make Reading Great Again

Spend time online and you wouldn’t be remiss for thinking that the solution to the crisis of masculinity and meaning is weight lifting, intermittent fasting, and cold plunges.

But not according to Shilo Brooks. Shilo, the CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center and a former Princeton professor who taught a wildly popular class on great books, says there is one real way to bring America’s lost boys home: to read.

I’m so thrilled that we announced the launch of our new podcast, Old School, about how great books make us better. Find the episodes here, alongside a gorgeous essay from Shilo about how reading saved his life:

And if you’re still questioning the urgency of Shilo’s work, look no further than Niall Ferguson’s piece on the consequences of the decline of literacy. As humans turn to emojis and memes instead of reading and writing, he says, we’ll lose everything: our reverence for the past, our resistance to conspiracy theories, and our ability to think altogether. Without books, Niall argues, we’ll be barbarians. Read it here:

Peace in the Middle East?

Is this the end of the war in Gaza? On Thursday, Hamas and Israel approved the first phase of Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza. Trump says all remaining hostages will be released “on Monday or Tuesday,” and that Israeli troops will be withdrawing to an “agreed-upon line.”

It’s hard not to rejoice at what feels like a breakthrough in this long, horribly bloody war. But there’s still so much we don’t know about the deal. We turned to our contributors, from Michael Oren to Eli Sharabi to H.R. McMaster, to help us make sense of it all:

And make sure not to miss Palestinian American humanitarian activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib on the pro-Palestinian protesters who are, in his words, denouncing the peace plan as a “colonial attempt to continue the genocide.”

A Police Revolt Against Mamdani

What will happen if Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor of New York City? According to former NYC police commissioner Bill Bratton, a “very significant exodus” from the New York Police Department. Olivia Reingold spoke to NYPD officers who told her “that they are considering retiring if Mamdani, who once advocated for ‘a socialist city council to defund the NYPD,’ wins the election.”

It’s a worrying omen for the city, and an important one to keep our eyes on. Give it a read:

Finally, we’ve published essays from some of our favorite columnists:

Douglas Murray explained how while Israel is winning the physical war, there’s a bigger war—the one to turn the Jewish state and its supporters into pariahs—that Western civilization is currently losing:

The history of slavery is too often used as a partisan weapon. Coleman Hughes explained why the facts should always get in the way of a good story.

Abigail Shrier, who we all know and love for her investigative work, wrote one of the most beautiful personal essays I’ve ever read. It’s about becoming the very fiercest of creatures: a mother in a pediatric hospital.

That’s it from me. Make sure to stay tuned this weekend for Larissa Phillips’s defense of matchmaking, and Joseph Epstein’s brilliant takedown of modern technology.

Until then, for those looking for something to watch this weekend, we’ve got options for you. Check out any one of our daily livestreams this week, from my conversation with Niall Ferguson on October 7, to today’s TGIF breakdown in video form with the inimitable Nellie Bowles and Will Rahn.