The Free Press

For much of the past decade, parents of children distressed about their gender were asked by medical providers: “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?”

Parents and communities were told it was their responsibility to affirm the identity of every child who said they were transgender and help secure a medical treatment plan. A wave of childr…

A few days ago my pet rabbit bit my finger. It was an accident; he was trying to bite a towel to move it out of his way, and I accidentally stuck my hand in his mouth. He is a gentle beast and would never bite a human intentionally. Anyway, the bite punctured and lacerated my left index finger near the front knuckle. I washed it out, put some ointment and a Band-Aid on it, and that was that.

It occurs to me that if my pet rabbit had instead been a tiger, I would now be dead. There is a reason most people don’t keep tigers as pets; they may be fluffy and cute, but they’re big and strong and can easily kill you. Instead, we generally keep pets who are smaller and weaker than us, allowing us to train them and, if necessary, to physically restrain them, minimizing the danger to our own health.

Until now, we haven’t had to think about this principle in the context of intelligence. As long as you or I or anyone we know has been alive—for all of recorded history, and in fact for much, much longer than that—humankind has been the most intelligent thing on this planet.

Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, our weekly column in which writers share a poem or paragraph that all of us should commit to heart. This week, Mary Katharine Ham remembers James Van Der Beek, the “Dawson’s Creek” star who died Wednesday at age 48—and on a 2021 message to his six children that distilled his extraordinary approach to life.

I was on my way to the gym when I heard of James Van Der Beek’s death Wednesday at the age of 48. It was not a surprise. I knew he was fighting cancer, thanks to my enduring obsession with the teen idol from my adolescence.

The premiere of Dawson’s Creek in 1998 was the first time I ever hosted a watch party. I was 17 and invited my friends over to my parents’ basement. Not the kind you see all over social media now, with tasteful light fixtures and wainscoting, but one from a different time, with a broken-down Naugahyde sofa, a flickery Zenith set, and exposed ductwork. It was a place to hide teenagers away, and we were happy to snag snacks and settle in for our delectation at the hands of The WB, a new network that became known for its “beautiful angsty teenagers maybe having sex in beautiful nostalgic Americana landscapes.”

It’s the Valentine’s Press! This week, Madeleine Kearns has Two Drinks with Dr. Paul McHugh, the man who was saying back in the ’70s that gender dysphoria shouldn’t be treated with hormones and surgery. Also, we’ve compiled a definitive list of the best Winter Olympics moments so far. And Suzy Weiss asks: Should we be worried about all these flamboyant resignation letters from AI companies? But first. . .

It’s no secret that here at The Free Press, we love love. We’re freaked out by the well-documented decline of dating and sex and marriage and relationships. So for Valentine’s Day, we’ve gone all out, as a reminder that love is still happening, and still worth it.

First up, a personal essay from Kara Kennedy, who was born at the end of the 20th century and therefore raised to believe that you shouldn’t rush into commitment. But in her mid-20s, she met a man on another continent, and within a year she had not only moved across an ocean to be with him but had married him and was pregnant.

“People sometimes ask if I would recommend doing things this way—meeting a man twice before getting in his car and never leaving,” she writes. “I remind them that at no point did this feel reckless or brave, but just the obvious thing to do.”

Next, another personal story, about what it’s like to be separated from the people you love more than anything on Earth. Two years ago, former politician P.G. Sittenfeld had to spend Valentine’s Day in prison after being convicted of campaign-finance crimes.

“During my time in custody, I almost never used my scarce monthly allotment of phone minutes—which came out to around 15 per day—to call home early in the morning,” he writes. He knew his wife Sarah would be scrambling to get their two sons, aged 1 and 4, out of bed and fed. “But since it was Valentine’s Day and I woke up in prison instead of at home next to my wife, I rang Sarah at 7 a.m.”

But what if you haven’t found love yet? What are you supposed to do? There’s an almost scientific school of thought on the internet that says you have to work hard to reach the apex of desirability; you have to go to the gym, intermittently fast, and even consider plastic surgery if you want to become a “ten” instead of a “two.”

That’s not true, says Paul Eastwick, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, who has a new book out that’s a more optimistic take on the science of human attraction. River Page spoke to him to get the lowdown.

Instead of obsessing about your abs, why not write an ad? Because—drumroll please—Free Press Cupid is back! We launched our old-school matchmaking service a few years ago and are delighted to say it resulted in the first ever official Free Press marriage this summer. The bride, Polina Fradkin, tells the whole story in her piece—which includes details of how you, too, can connect to an eligible Free Press reader. Get ready to fall in love! And Happy Valentine’s Day.

You all know Free Press columnist Kat Rosenfield as a sharp observer of modern culture—one who writes essays about everything from our narratives about immigration to the glory of free speech, and that’s just in the last week. But she has another life: as a writer of thrillers. Her next novel, How to Survive in the Woods, has the office absolutely gripped. It’s a twisty tale of an ex-girlboss with a dark secret and a controlling husband she’s desperate to be rid of, set in the shadowy forests of northern Maine. The novel is out March 10 (but you can preorder today!), and that evening, Kat will be in conversation with Suzy Weiss in New York. It’s going to be a very fun evening with two Weekend Press greats—and tickets are selling fast, so get yours today.

We’ve had a bumper week for culture pieces—and here are a few you need to read, if you haven’t already:

How should you spend your weekend? We asked our producer and host Rafaela Siewert for her recommendations. . .

🥚Eat . . . A salted egg dessert. Contrary to the name, it’s not salty or eggy. It’s sweet, creamy, and unique. For New Yorkers, I recommend the salted egg (aka Hong Kong-style) French toast at Potluck Club in Chinatown or Kong Sihk Tong in Flushing.

🧘‍♀️Move . . . The mats are basically touching and someone else’s sweat will hit you, but doing yoga in a 98-degree room with mood lighting and indie pop in the background is my favorite hour of the day. Google your nearest hot-yoga studio!

👗Rent . . . My 73-year-old colleague Joe Nocera once asked me, “How do you own so many dresses? Every day you’re in a new one!” To which I said, “Joe, do you want to know my secret?” and proceeded to tell him it’s Nuuly. I rent all my clothes! Yes, you can wear a sequined, two-toned gown for 30 days—and then send it back. What’s better than that? When I told Joe this, he responded by saying, “Wow, this whole time I just thought you were really rich!”

📺Watch . . . Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope. Think: Southern Italy in the ’70s, a dazzling Celeste Dalla Porta, peculiar and disgusting plot points. . . . Everything in this movie is decadent. I recently watched it and couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks. Behold:

That’s all, folks! Have a great weekend.

The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.

As an editor at The Free Press, I obviously love hearing people’s wildest and wackiest opinions, but here is one I will not tolerate: that the Summer Olympics is more interesting than the Winter Olympics. If you hold this view, I say to you: That is ridiculous. Have you seen how far the ski jumpers fly? How fast the speed skaters corner? How many times the snowboarders hurl themselves head over heels midair, risking their necks for no other reason than that they can and they want to?

And that’s supposed to compare to, what, the 100 m final? Both of Usain Bolt’s feet were mere inches from the ground at all times! The long jump? Those guys land on sand.

On average, the Winter Olympics gets far fewer viewers than the Summer one. This is wrong. If you haven’t been watching, you’ve missed some moments that will make your jaw drop and your breath stop. But don’t worry: It’s not too late for you to catch up. A crack team of Free Press culture writers have assembled a list of the most unmissable moments from the last week of the 2026 Games. As I write, and with another week of the Games to go, the U.S. is in third place in the league table with 14 medals, including four golds; in other words, Americans are covering themselves in glory in Italy this month, and our office is completely hooked. —Freya Sanders

Heterosexuality is in crisis. Young people aren’t dating, and the ones who are often find themselves on a romantic hamster wheel, exchanging endless messages over dating apps like Tinder and going on awkward, fruitless first dates. As female essayists describe terms like heteropessimism in the pages of The New York Times, young men congregate in Discord channels to brainwash each other into thinking that hitting themselves in the face with a hammer is their only shot at getting a girlfriend.

Whom or what to blame for all this romantic dysfunction? People might point fingers at the sexual revolution, social atomization, grim economic prospects for the young, or the rise of dating apps. But invariably, the discussion always seems to go back to a pop version of evolutionary psychology.

Two years ago, Valentine’s Day arrived about six weeks after I reported to a federal prison in Ashland, Kentucky. Following a movielike sting operation in which I, then a Cincinnati City Council member, received campaign donations from undercover FBI agents, a jury convicted me of one count of federal extortion and one count of federal bribery, alongside four acquittals. A judge handed down a 16-month sentence. For more than a year, I would be separated from my wife, Sarah, and our two young sons, then 1 and 4.

While there was nothing I could do to immediately fix the situation, I was determined to at least still try to make birthdays and holidays—Valentine’s Day included—as special as possible. So, weeks in advance, I began my plan. Despite having little to no crafting abilities, I cut a piece of paper into the shape of a heart, as though I were an elementary school student, and scrawled a personalized Valentine’s note.

If we’d met at a bar, Dr. Paul R. McHugh would have ordered a glass of Irish whiskey—Bushmills Black Bush. “Only one though.”

Instead, I’m visiting the 94-year-old psychiatrist at his apartment in Baltimore where he’s lived since 2022, after his wife of 62 years died and he sold the family home.

We sat at his dining table, an elegant room full of books and family photographs. The wooden chairs, he said, are better for his back than the couch.

It’s not my first time meeting McHugh. He and I became fast friends in 2018 when I was starting out in journalism as a reporter for National Review. Back then, he was one of the few leaders in psychiatry speaking both skeptically and publicly about “gender-affirming care.” He told me then that lawsuits would be what finally brought down the transitioning of minors. And indeed, just last week, The Free Press reported on the first detransitioner in the United States to win a malpractice suit.

As early as in the ’70s, McHugh has been warning that hormones and surgery are not safe and effective treatments for gender dysphoria (or gender-identity disorder, as it was then known) for patients of any age. As head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins in 1979 he shut down sex-change surgeries after follow-up studies showed they weren’t improving patients’ mental health outcomes.

“I didn’t think it was such a big deal,” he said, noting that the idea of medical transition as a right—as opposed to a radical, and at best experimental, intervention—came only later.

Welcome back to Ancient Wisdom, our series in which writers over 70 tell us how they are aging gracefully. Last week, Michael Friedman, 82, wrote about dealing with the grief he has felt since losing his lifelong soulmate, his wife Harriet. This week, John D. Spooner, 88, explains why knowing your family’s stories, and passing them along to the next generation, enriches everyone’s lives.

If you want to receive Ancient Wisdom directly in your inbox, sign up here.

Let me tell you a story.

I grew up in my maternal grandparents’ house in Boston. My grandfather started a business with a partner in Chinatown in the 1930s manufacturing maternity lingerie, mostly slips. I was the only child in the house of five adults that included my mother, and Katie, our cook. Katie was from Ireland, one of seven children, from a little village in Connemara. She arrived in America at age 18, escaping a famine there. She came here with one possession, a gold sovereign coin with the visage of “Bertie”—the King of England, Edward VII—stamped on it.

Katie gave me the coin on my 21st birthday. I had it put on a gold chain, and I wear it every St. Patrick’s Day.

Katie was one of the hundreds of young Irish women who worked in the houses of well-off Bostonians, and she became the most important woman in my life. She was there to help with my first steps and my toilet training. She spoon-fed me my first food, applesauce, and sang lullabies to me in Irish.

Katie taught me how to step-dance and sing along with her in her native tongue, songs like “Finnegan’s Wake” and “Whiskey, Yer the Devil.” She told me my first risqué joke and taught me how to swear in Irish. It was like she raised me as an Irish boy in a Jewish household in America. I was Johnny in English, but always Sean or Seaneen to Katie.

In the summer of 2024, I was 29; living in Tel Aviv, Israel; single; and wondering if that last part would always be true.

I was tired of the dating apps, which I would download, then delete in frustration, just to do it all over again every few months. I was tired, too, of the setups, and the wasted evenings, or the promising evenings followed by a loss in interest, the debrief with friends after yet another unsatisfying date. Mostly, I was tired of feeling uncertain about the future.