The Free Press

As someone who has dedicated my life to studying happiness, I am often asked two related questions: What is happiness? And how do we pursue it? During this semiquincentennial anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, those questions have taken on new urgency. Two hundred and fifty years ago, after all, Thomas Jefferson famously declared that we have the God-given right to “the pursuit of happiness.”

What did he mean? And what does this mean for us in 2026?

This column is named for the Declaration’s founding promise, so you’d hope that I would know something about exactly how to pursue happiness. The problem is that when this tricky phrase is followed as we often understand happiness today—a physical sensation to be obtained—it leads in the wrong direction. The more you pursue feelings of happiness, the less of it you will get.

As the plane from Frankfurt landed in Tel Aviv, I finished the last pages of The Sunset Lands, an unfinished novel by Julien Gracq, written in the mid-1950s but not published in English until 2014. Gracq’s book is the tale of a fictional late medieval kingdom, rich, self-satisfied, and decadent, whose leadership refuses to recognize the barbarian armies mustering on its borders.

The unnamed narrator sets out with friends for Roscharta, a distant city of the kingdom, where valiant defenders hold out against a barbarian siege. Because they know that their lives could be destroyed in a day by the head-chopping savages, they live richly and joyfully. Because they face the real and imminent threat of death, they know how to live with dignity and hope.

“This is Israel!” I thought. “Why can’t people see that?”

Then it hit me: Because I am almost 60 years old.

I came to Jerusalem last week to attend the National Conservatism conference. Though NatCon founder Yoram Hazony is an Israeli American, this is the first NatCon event to be held in the Jewish state. The fact that Israel’s October 7 anniversary occurred midway through the conference added weight and poignancy to the proceedings.

Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, River Page has two drinks with the gay Christian editor of “Playboy.” Spencer Klavan on Anne Carson, who just won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Suzy Weiss on Dolly Parton’s arms-dealing nephew. And more!

But first: Get ready for the tech films. . .

They dominate the news, and this fall, they’re dominating the screen, too. Movies about tech overlords are apparently inescapable. Next month, Netflix will release The Altruists, all about Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto scammer currently serving a 25-year federal sentence. The end of the year will bring Artificial, in which Andrew Garfield will play Sam Altman. And next week, we’ll be treated to a bizarre documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, of Theranos fame, who let a comedian film her at home in the weeks before she went to prison.

But the tsunami of tech flicks began this week, with the release of two much-hyped titles: Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, a sequel to his classic Facebook biopic, The Social Network, and Alex Gibney’s four-hour-long documentary on Elon Musk. And so, we sent two of our finest critics to the movies, to tell us if either’s worth watching—and whether they capture our cultural obsession with the very rich Americans who tell us they’ll change the world.

First up, Liel Leibovitz sat through Musk, with which Elon himself did not collaborate—because, as he posted on X to his 241.5 million followers, he thinks Gibney “is a douche.”

“You could take the world’s richest man at his word,” writes Liel. Or: “You could spend three hours and 55 minutes watching Gibney do his best to prove Musk right.”

Instead of making a good-faith attempt to examine the success of the world’s richest man, Gibney tears him to pieces, arguing that he has no talent and is a force for ill in this world. In the opening scene, Earth explodes in slow motion. Shortly afterward, Elon’s ex-girlfriend Ashley St. Clair breaks down in tears on screen, recounting how he broke things off with her—and then “was so heartless as to offer her $15 million in cash and an additional $100,000 a month for the next two decades.”

On his way out the theater, Liel writes, “I was handed a pin that read ‘I saw Musk,’ suggesting that the director himself considered sitting through his four-hour film a feat meriting some sort of medal.”

Is there anything to learn from Gibney’s lengthy tirade? Read Liel’s piece to find out.

Next up, Suzy Weiss went to see The Social Reckoning—Aaron Sorkin’s sequel to his 2010 film about the founding of Facebook. What chapter from the storied company’s 20-year history has he chosen to dramatize this time? “The plot turns on the fact that, in 2018, Facebook overhauled its algorithm to optimize for ‘meaningful social interactions,’ ” writes Suzy. “You can imagine what captivating cinema this all makes for.”

Where The Social Network was largely set on the moody, gorgeous Harvard campus, this one is set in ugly corporate offices. Where the earlier movie portrayed Mark Zuckerberg as a spurned lover and an insecure teenager, in this one, he’s a robot. The original was an ode to ambition and a cautionary tale about the hubris of youth; the sequel is about, well, a tweak to the algorithm.

“The closest thing to sexual tension the viewer gets is when Mikey Madison gets all sweaty in her apartment, which her character keeps at tropical temperatures to ease her neuropathy, a side effect of her celiac disease,” writes Suzy. Don’t miss her review:

Last week, the siren of Gen Z, TikTok megastar Alix Earle, went viral for admitting that she’s never read a book—despite graduating from the University of Miami with a business degree. The internet was outraged; but Suzy Weiss and Dan Ahdoot say she’s exactly where she should be. “It would be weirder if she did read a book,” says Dan. “You don’t go to Miami to get deep into Chaucer,” says Suzy.

This week on Second Thought, they break down the virtue of staying in your lane—and offer the influencer a list of books to get started. “I think Alix Earle would be very moved by The Giving Tree,” Suzy says.

Plus, they get into some of the unpopular culture stories you may have missed this week—like the Los Angeles real estate agent accused of spying for China, and why Dolly Parton’s arms-dealing nephew is coming for her fortune. Suzy asks: “If he has Haitian militias offering him torpedoes, why does he need the royalties from 9 to 5?”

Click below to watch the episode, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

This week, Kat Rosenfield reflected on the extremely disturbing report that childless adults are buying the majority of Toys“R”Us products; Jacob Savage asked what went wrong with kids’ books; and Larissa Phillips wrote a remarkable piece about hookup culture. Catch up today:

Knock knock, it’s Cupid! A new batch of ads from single Free Pressers is live on the site. Click here to meet a Washingtonian looking for a woman who doesn’t suffer fools; a recovering workaholic in Jerusalem; and a Catholic convert in San Diego. Your special someone could be just one email away! If you’d like to take a chance at Free Press love, write a paragraph that defines you, including your age, where you live, and what you’re looking for, and send it over to [email protected].

How should you spend the rest of your weekend? We asked contributing writer Kara Kennedy for her recommendations. . .

📺Watch . . . Kill Jackie, a new thriller on AMC+ starring the wonderful Catherine Zeta-Jones as Jackie Price, a chic art dealer whose past catches up with her when someone hires seven of the world’s deadliest hitmen to kill her. It’s from Damon Thomas, one of the directors behind Killing Eve, and is similarly glamorous and gleefully violent. But here’s why I’m losing my mind: Zeta-Jones is using her Welsh accent on screen for the first time, and as we are both from God’s country, I can confirm it’s the real thing. She also went back to her hometown of Swansea to shoot some scenes, and Jackie’s home security system is hidden behind fake Andy Warhol prints of Tom Jones, which is the most Welsh thing ever. Cymru am byth.

🍜Eat . . . peanut chili noodles, from a recipe I found via Claire, an Instagram chef who says she once cooked for a Middle Eastern royal family. I can’t verify that, but the noodles are fit for a queen. Boil the noodles, and while they go, whisk everything else in a big bowl until it turns glossy. Toss in the noodles and most of the spring onions (scallions, to you), and dinner is done in 10 minutes.

📚Read . . . F. Scott Fitzgerald, with me. My summer project of rereading the classics got a bit out of hand: After devouring Tales of the Jazz Age and Tender Is the Night, I fell into what my husband now calls my love affair with Fitz. I’m currently on All the Sad Young Men, his 1926 story collection, which turned 100 this year and feels painfully current. I’m saving The Great Gatsby for last, like dessert. I can’t help but pity Fitzgerald as I read his work. He died at 44 believing he was a failure, his final royalty check came to about $13, and Gatsby had been a flop. It now sells hundreds of thousands of copies a year. It’s a reminder that nobody gets to read their own reviews from the future.

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

You may not have heard of Anne Carson before she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. But if you’ve ever come across any verse by Sappho, the grande dame of ancient Greek literature, you may well have read it in a translation from Carson’s 2002 collection, If Not, Winter. I first encountered Carson’s work when I read her rendition of a poem that means more to me than almost any other in the world—the Sappho poem known simply as “Fragment 31.” It’s among Western literature’s most valuable treasures.

Sappho is one of those artists who deserves every bit of her awesome reputation. Much of her work was preserved only partially, in quotations or on torn and decayed slips of papyrus. We can read “Fragment 31” today because it was quoted incompletely, but at length, by the literary critic Longinus. In its surviving form, it has four short stanzas, plus an extra line to hint that there once was more. But even those brief words demonstrate why some ancient readers called Sappho “The 10th Muse,” numbering her among the mythical goddesses of song and literature.

MANHATTAN, New York — Phillip Picardi arrives carrying a black leather jacket and a paperback copy of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno—which he’s reading for the third time this year. Dante “meets people who are alive on Earth, but their souls are in hell,” Picardi tells me. “I think it’s a fitting metaphor for what’s happening to us in this time.” But we are in Hell’s Kitchen, not hell, and it’s happy hour. I order a gin and tonic.

Picardi, 35, was in some ways a strange choice to be the editor in chief of Playboy, the seven-decade-old soft-core porn magazine best known for its iconic bunny logo and nude centerfolds. He’s a devoutly Christian graduate of Harvard Divinity School, and therefore not the kind of guy you’d expect to be overseeing a publication whose recent headlines have included “She Pegged Her Husband. He Couldn’t Get Enough.” and “I Had Sex In A Hot-Air Balloon.” He’s also gay—which some people might say is a bit like letting a vegan run a steak house.

But Picardi, who’s been in the job since March, disagrees. “Gay men are responsible, in one way, shape, or form, for almost every iconic image that has been made since the dawn of photography,” he declares from across the dimly lit table, sipping a Vesper martini. “We are stylists, we are hairstylists, we are makeup artists,” he goes on. “If there is an image of a beautiful woman that has circulated throughout the globe, I can guarantee you that there was a gay man right off camera.”

Besides, the raison d’être of Playboy has changed, now that the internet exists. “Men are not masturbating to print mags. I mean—you can. I’m not going to police how people consume our product,” Picardi says, laughing. “But it is true that Playboy used to serve a specific purpose that is no longer needed.” He is trying to “make something that does not feel like pornography, but feels like something else.”

The Social Reckoning opens on the side of the highway. Police pull up on a white woman, whose car is pouring smoke. She’s drunk, and not civil; the interaction between her and the police escalates, until she whips out her phone and starts berating the officers, hurling racist insults, before they arrest her.

“Watch me own DEI cops” is the caption accompanying the video, posted to a fictional right-wing Facebook page called “Voice of Reason.” It catches the attention of Frances Haugen, played by Mikey Madison, a data scientist on Facebook’s “civic integrity” team—which was established, we later learn, “to create tension between growth and safety” inside the tech company. Haugen knows the Karen flipping out in the video from a workout class and, get this, the woman was a progressive before she became a Facebook power user and then, apparently, a right-wing extremist.

As Haugen tells anyone who’ll listen, that’s no coincidence: As she tries to tell her boss, then her deskmate, and then Jeff Horwitz, an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she “ran a classifier on 251 political groups” and “30 percent of content hits multiple risk factors,” including political polarization and misinformation. Wow, multiple risk factors? You can imagine what captivating cinema this all makes for.

On December 10, 1986, I was 14 years old, sitting in Oslo City Hall as my father, Elie Wiesel, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. I will never forget the look of hope on his face that day. He had spent his life tortured by the thought that the world had looked away from the Jewish people as the Nazis filled the gas chambers and crematoria with our brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, children. Finally, he felt seen, and he had a message to share. As he put it in his acceptance speech, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” My father was honored because he had turned the memory of genocide into a moral duty to the living.

This morning, the same committee awarded the same prize to Navi Pillay, who chaired the UN commission of inquiry that, on September 16 of last year, betrayed the meaning of the word genocide and weaponized it against Israel. Her commission held Israel to impossible moral standards demanded of no other sovereign nation defending itself from attack. The decision followed years of anti-Israel advocacy by Pillay, including signing a manifesto in 2020 calling on governments to “Sanction Apartheid Israel.” Others have been able to see Pillay for who she is. In 2022, for example, Berlin’s mayor withdrew her support from an event honoring Pillay with a peace medal. The event was subsequently canceled.

The decision to honor Pillay is not a onetime lapse for the Nobel Committee. It is part of a long-standing trend. Members of the committee have said publicly that they wished they could take back former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres’s 1994 prize because of concerns over Israel’s conduct. A decade later, four of the five members were still defending former Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat’s prize, awarded that same year. The Israeli laureate was judged by everything he did afterward. The Palestinian laureate was never judged again. Antisemitism today looks less like hatred than like scrutiny with one permanent defendant, carried out in the language of justice. Kåre Kristiansen, a member of the committee, understood this. He resigned within an hour of the 1994 announcement because he could not honor a man whose record was soaked in terror.

This time last year, the conservative writer Helen Andrews delivered one of the most talked about essays in recent memory. Published in “Compact” and titled “The Great Feminization,” it argued that the woke era was best understood in terms of the differences between men and women. “Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field,” she wrote. The essay established Andrews as one of the most provocative voices on sex and power in American life, launching a thousand responses. It also included a stark warning: A feminized legal system would come to represent campus Title IX tribunals, where sympathy for accusers outweighed due process.

Hence why we were so interested to see another piece by Andrews in “Compact” this week, revisiting her argument and relating it to the case of the Cornell 7. Late last month, two years after the local district attorney declined to bring charges in an alleged rape at a fraternity house, New York governor Kathy Hochul handed the case to Attorney General Letitia James and suggested that two women might see it differently than men would. On that point, Andrews agrees. What follows is her case on why that should worry us all.

—The Editors

New York governor Kathy Hochul emphasized her gender when asked on October 3 about her appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate a possible rape at a fraternity house at Cornell University in 2024. Hochul is the first woman to serve as New York’s governor. Letitia James, the woman she appointed as special prosecutor, is the state’s first female attorney general. Seeing these two women take on the Cornell case has a special symbolism, Hochul explained. “I’ve heard from a lot of people,” she said. “The image gives them comfort to know that two women perhaps are looking at this differently than men would in the same position.”

She is right. The approach to the law reflected in the New York Democratic officials’ handling of the Cornell case represents a distinctively female perspective. Unfortunately, that perspective is incompatible with the rule of law.

Hochul said she felt it necessary to appoint a special prosecutor because she had “lost faith in the Tompkins County DA’s ability” to handle the case. That district attorney is Matthew Van Houten. He is no backwoods sheriff. The motto “Inclusion Through Diversity” appears at the top of all the documents his office has published regarding this matter. The reason he did not bring charges two years ago was because, on the basis of the accuser’s sworn statement, no crime had occurred. The sexual conduct that night was, in Van Houten’s words, “voluntary, conscious, and consensual.”

The humorist Tom Lehrer once quipped that satire died when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. Apparently the Nobel committee never received the memo, because it murdered satire once again. On Friday the panel awarded its peace prize to octogenarian antisemite Navi Pillay.

Jonathan Swift himself could not conjure a greater irony than bestowing a peace prize on Pillay. She was the head of a kangaroo commission that in 2025 concluded Israel had committed a genocide by defending itself after the October 7, 2023, massacre unleashed against it.

In 2023, Alex Gibney, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker, announced that he was working on a documentary about Elon Musk. He asked Musk for an interview. The answer was delivered on X: “Gibney,” Musk informed his 241.5 million followers, “is a douche.”

You could take the world’s richest man at his word. Or you could spend three hours and 55 minutes watching Gibney do his best to prove Musk right.

The director’s new film, released Friday and simply titled Musk, brings the same monomaniacal energy to assassinating its subject’s character that Musk himself brings to building reusable rockets or self-driving cars. The scope of Gibney’s ambition is revealed early on in the film: Because Musk wouldn’t sit down for an interview, Gibney coos as the opening credits roll, the director decided to create an animated AI Elon and interview it instead.

In the hands of a filmmaker actually curious about his subject, this decision might’ve generated some genuine insights, especially as Robo-Musk was only fed lines that IRL Musk had spoken in public interviews. Instead, Gibney gives us a cartoonish Bond villain, sitting on a gaming chair and spitting out decontextualized snippets meant to support the film’s not-so-subtle thesis: Unless we somehow stop him, Elon Musk will destroy the world.

Gibney seems to mean it literally: The movie’s poster shows Musk standing atop the globe, having cut it in half with a chainsaw, and the film itself begins with a poorly animated sequence showing the earth exploding in slow motion.

And that’s just the first five minutes.