The Free Press

Welcome to the Second Thought newsletter, my weekly tour of what’s going on in the zeitgeist: This week in pop culture, like most weeks, began with a meltdown over Sydney Sweeney. This time, it was about her character on the show Euphoria, the HBO series that mirrors Sweeney in at least two ways: First, people never fail to get riled up over what it shows, and says, or what they think it might be saying—and second, they simply cannot look away.

On Tuesday, I wrote a piece about how, in the season of the show that’s currently airing, Sweeney’s character, Cassie, plays an aspiring OnlyFans star who is willing to do anything, pretty much, for money and attention. That includes donning a ridiculous baby costume (though more often she’s donning nothing at all), and fulfilling the requests of her thousands of male followers: for her to humiliate them, eat hot dogs in front of a camera for them, or simply whisper their name.

Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and chairman of the Vandenberg Coalition and the Tikvah Fund, joins the show to discuss Israel, Iran, and the new power dynamics in the Middle East. What new alliances have emerged since the chaos on October 7, 2023? How has the current war with Iran reshaped th…

My father loved the woods, lived for them. As a D-plus student at Dartmouth, he was best known for being the head of all the outdoor clubs. Canoeing, climbing, he was your guy. Studying, not as much. After he came home from World War II, his father told him he had to take over the family’s struggling Custom-Made Paper Bag Company, which was staying afloat mainly thanks to the contract it had to make the paper covering for the Good Humor Creamsicle. When I visited the factory floor as a little kid, I couldn’t believe there was no ice cream involved.

During the war, he had commanded a thousand men on three islands in the Pacific, watching many of them die. He came home a quiet, intense man of few words. Every day, he commuted from his home in Bronxville to an old factory building in Long Island City, where he sat at a desk behind a wall of glass separating him and his secretary from the machinery, trying to drum up paper-bag clients even as the plastic bag began taking over the market.

The commute—one train and two subways each way—was part of why my father disliked the job. Another was that Bronxville was far removed from nature, where he felt most at home. His father, a legendarily grim man, sensed that not only did his son need a reward for having taken over the struggling shop, he needed a place to relax. So in 1948, he loaned my dad $10,000 to buy his piece of heaven on earth: a small, sagging, 19th-century farmhouse that lacked plumbing or electricity, smack in the middle of 1,000 acres of pines, maples, and birches in western Massachusetts. The land included a lake with an island in the middle that was nothing but pine trees.

A patient recently came to see me, saying she was furious with a friend. What began as an ordinary disappointment—a canceled dinner and a text returned too late—had become something far larger and far more charged. The friend was now “toxic.” The exchange had become a “violation of boundaries.” The hurt itself had been elevated into “trauma.” She had screenshots and a polished story about what the episode revealed about her friend’s pathology.

What she didn’t have was introspection. She was no longer asking the most psychologically useful questions: Could this have been carelessness rather than ill intent? Was the reaction intensified by other things that may have been going on? Had she contributed in any way to the conflict? The language she brought into the room gave her something powerful: certainty. But certainty is often the enemy of insight.

This scene has become one of the defining features of my work as a psychotherapist, and it sits at the center of the argument in my forthcoming book, Therapy Nation: Too much of modern therapy culture keeps people stuck, reinforcing grievance, externalizing blame, and turning everyone else into the reason their lives are so miserable.

The problem begins with my own field. For years, my profession has trained clinicians to elevate validation over challenge, affirmation over interpretation, and emotional fluency over the harder work of behavioral change. What has followed is the rise of grievance culture dressed up as psychological sophistication. Too many therapists now function less as clinicians than as reinforcers of the most self-protective interpretation available, teaching patients to locate the problem everywhere but themselves. Of course it is your boss’s fault. Of course your colleague is toxic. Of course your ex is a narcissist. Of course the world keeps wounding you. In this softened therapeutic frame, frustration is rarely something to examine; it’s something to assign.

“You’re pining for a daddy you didn’t even know.”

“My dad is coming home.”

Of all the lines in the new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, those two generated the fiercest criticism. Other aspects looked more promising: The brief glimpses of the movie’s visuals showed that it had all the brooding grandeur of past Nolan favorites like Interstellar and The Dark Knight Rises. This in itself is a welcome change from the last major Odyssey movie, Uberto Pasolini’s The Return (2024)—a mopey, demythologized retelling of the poem’s closing scenes. But Nolan’s trailer still fell catastrophically flat for many viewers. There are devotees of ancient epics who already seem convinced Nolan will turn this 2,700-year-old legend into shallow pablum with all the idiocies of modern Hollywood.

After all, besides the appearance of words like “dad” and “daddy” in the script, the cast includes such names as rap star Travis Scott and transgender actor Elliot Page. It seems Nolan wants his version to feel contemporary, as he thinks Homer’s original did for the Greeks: He told Time magazine that Scott was cast because the Odyssey was “oral poetry, which is analogous to rap.” Page probably isn’t playing the mighty hero Achilles, as the online rumors had it, but seeing a biological female play any male hero feels like yet another insertion of identity politics into a beloved part of the Western canon.

This is also what has made some people—including Elon Musk—upset to see the black actress Lupita Nyong’o playing Helen of Troy, a ravishing Greek beauty described in the poem as “white-armed” (leukōlenos). Some of these criticisms seem overwrought to me; a few have been outright racist. But at the same time, it’s true that Hollywood has recently been in the grips of a nasty obsession with race and gender, which often takes the form of subverting classic tales. It’s still too soon to say for sure, but there are worrisome signs that Nolan may dumb down Homer’s language and smear his story into the muck of contemporary political obsessions.

It’s Friday, May 15. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Maya Sulkin visits a school without teachers. Aaron MacLean reveals the American academic Xi Jinping loves to cite. Charles Lane explains what everyone gets wrong about illegal immigrants and crime. River Page tells the story of the racist streamer who allegedly shot someone in broad daylight. And much more.

But first: an update on Pastor Ezra Jin.

Today in China, Donald Trump told reporters that Xi said he is giving “very serious consideration” to the release of Pastor Jin. No reporter has been following this case more closely than Frannie Block. Her long read on this case, with exclusive details on Jin’s brave fight to worship freely, is the most important story we have published this week. Read Frannie’s deep dive into Beijing’s war on Christianity—and say a prayer for Ezra Jin.

Next: Maya Sulkin visits a school where there are no teachers, the academic day lasts two hours, and a perfect test score earns kids $100. Is this the future of education?

How to prepare kids for the Age of AI? One place with a radical answer to that question is Alpha School in San Francisco, where the children of the city’s tech elite are taught to the tune of $75,000. I visited it recently, and it is unlike any school I have ever seen.

It’s a place where kids are given most of the day to work on their own projects, and where good work is rewarded with cash. It sounds like a tech-bro fever dream, and critics say it is gamifying education in a way that misunderstands how learning actually happens. But could it work? To find out, I spoke to students, parents, guides, and critics. Read my dispatch on this experiment in education for the automated age:

—Maya Sulkin

New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof’s incendiary article this week alleging that Israeli security officers systematically subject Palestinian prisoners to horrific sexual assaults has earned plenty of pushback and criticism, including in our pages. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone so far as to threaten Kristof and the Times with a libel suit. But would Netanyahu’s case have a chance in an American courtroom? Jed Rubenfeld weighs in with his verdict, and explains why such a suit would go nowhere.

And for an in-depth look at how such extraordinary claims make it into The New York Times, check out this invaluable conversation between Call Me Back podcast host Dan Senor and our columnist Matti Friedman. Matti, a veteran Middle East correspondent, knows quite a bit about the propaganda apparatus that routinely pushes false or unverifiable claims about Israel, and examines how institutions like the Times can get duped by activists. “In the world of disinformation and social media, these institutions could have been islands of sanity,” he tells Dan. “Instead, my colleagues decided that they didn’t want to cover the circus—they wanted to be in it.” Read a transcript of their conversation here.

As Trump’s visit to China comes to a close today, we’ll see what—if anything—it accomplished. He had plenty to talk about with Chairman Xi, from AI to trade deals to flash points like Iran and Ukraine. But looming over everything, as Niall Ferguson noted in his must-read analysis of the relationship between the two superpowers, is Taiwan. Are China and the U.S. fated to fight over Taiwan? Read Niall’s piece on what might just be the most important question in the world right now.

On a much lighter note, HBO’s Euphoria is back after a long absence, which means co-star Sydney Sweeney is, once again, the subject of much debate. The new season features her character working as an OnlyFans model, which has ignited debate about whether profiting off her body is an act of empowerment, or a symbol of the degradation of women worldwide. Sweeney is no stranger to such battles, and if her behavior on- or off-screen makes you uncomfortable, argues Suzy Weiss, that’s entirely the point. She’s a modern-day Helen of Troy, with a body that launches a thousand takes. But the only take you need, whether you’ve been following Sweeney’s career or not, is of course Suzy’s. Read it here:

In other TV-star news, Los Angeles mayoral candidate and erstwhile reality show villain Spencer Pratt somehow seems like he just might be the first Republican mayor of Los Angeles in 25 years. The odds of him replacing incumbent Karen Bass remain slim, but he’s rising in the polls, delivering memorable debate performances, and using his entertainment chops to create viral ad after viral ad. So what can we make of Pratt’s unlikely rise? Peter Savodnik has the answer: “The Meaning of Spencer Pratt, which sounds like a short story by Oscar Wilde, is not at all ideological. It is not symptomatic of a red wave. It is about tens or even hundreds of thousands of voters waking up from their stupor and demanding to know what the hell happened to their city.” Read Peter’s masterful dispatch here:

And finally, we bring you another story of institutional failure—this time from the halls of academia. Four years ago, Harvard University committed $100 million to what it called the “Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery Initiative,” an excavation of its historical involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. Harvard wasn’t the only school to launch this kind of project; but the size of its investment was extraordinary. And perhaps just as spectacular was its failure, writes Novi Zhukovsky. In a sweeping investigation, Novi uncovered “a cascade of institutional embarrassments,” and exposed them all in The Free Press this week.

Since October 7, there is not a lot that the media can do to shock the mainstream Jewish community. It often feels like we’ve seen it all, from false BBC reports on Gaza famine that get corrected quietly, in a very small font, to widespread retractions of pieces that use Hamas as a source without disclaimers. With each instance, blatant falsehoods sink further and further into the public consciousness, to sometimes catastrophic effect.

It can feel, if you’re Jewish, like a death by a thousand cuts.

This week brought one of the more egregious examples of this trend, when Nicholas Kristof published an opinion column in The New York Times alleging a series of instances of sexual abuse by Israelis—in particular, prison guards and soldiers—against Palestinians. The problem was that the piece, which spread rapidly across the globe, was broadly based in misrepresentations, poor sourcing, and demonstrable falsehoods.

Every time an incident like this happens—and it happens more often than ever these days—it falls to the righteous people with integrity, Jews and non-Jews alike, to figure out the best way to respond. This is true when the attack comes from anonymous people on social media, and it is especially true when it comes from the most influential paper in the world, via an acclaimed, multi-Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist.

So often, across the West, the risks facing the Jewish people are those of violence and harassment. But this week, we fought a battle of words. What do we do when some of the most fundamental institutions in our society turn on us? When places we once supported and revere reveal that they find us unconscionable? Here at The Free Press, the answer is clear: We call it out, we fight it, and we make the case for reality on behalf of all those who still value free thought, honesty inquiry, and the pursuit of truth.

This week, my colleague Eli Lake debunked some of Kristof’s more outlandish claims. Our Middle East analyst, Haviv Rettig Gur, wrote about how Israel’s true prison violence issue is distorted by the propaganda machine seeking the Jewish state’s erasure. Jed Rubenfeld wrote on the legal risks for The New York Times as it finds itself facing a potential lawsuit from the Israeli government. And Matti Friedman and Dan Senor explored how the Times’ abdication of the pursuit of truth leads falsehoods like those published by Kristof to its pages in the first place.

Hello, and welcome back to our news roundup, where you find some of the headlines, and all of the bias. Let’s get into it.

→ American rage about the economy is hitting Trump: Inflation has hit 3.8 percent, and Americans are mad as hell about the economy. Per CNN’s new poll, Dems lead a generic ballot 45–42. And 65 percent of Americans say the tariffs have made their economic situation worse. Maybe President Trump’s visit to China will be part of getting those smoothed out to keep our cheap goods nice and cheap and microplastic-y. He’s there with Elon Musk and Tim Cook and 15 other major American business leaders this week, firmly establishing China as the official Other Great World Power and probably giving away Taiwan (at this point, fine, just make sure the knockoff furniture I ordered from Shenzhen comes in the right colors, and in two days). China is officially Mar-a-Lago of the East. Their history culminates in this moment—the Trump-Xi Summit featuring Elon and his son in a cute little vest. Trump was treated to a state dinner where a military band played the Trump and bathhouse anthem “Y.M.C.A.,” and the president took a little sip of champagne. One day this will mark the beginning of some significant geopolitical shift with centuries-long consequences, but for now it was just sort of cute and odd.

On this week’s episode of Second Thought, Suzy Weiss sits down with screenwriter Allan Loeb—he wrote, among other films, 21, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, The Dilemma, and Just Go with It—for a wide-ranging, entertaining conversation about Hollywood, AI anxiety, compulsive gambling, and the strange psychology of risk.

Loeb opens up about creating imaginary friends whose net worths he obsessively tracked as a child, which developed into a gambling addiction that has checkered his adult life. He recounts losing fortunes shorting Tesla and spiraling through blackjack systems in Bahamian casinos—all while becoming a renowned Hollywood writer.

Suzy and Allan unpack the future of storytelling in the age of AI, why Hollywood may not be dying nearly as fast as everyone claims, Tom Holland’s attachment style, and why baseball is “the crystal meth of gambling.”

Then, comedian Dan Ahdoot joins the panel for a rundown of the week’s biggest culture stories—from the hantavirus panic to Billie Eilish’s new James Cameron–directed documentary, to the roast of Kevin Hart (the women took the night!).