The Free Press

Free Pressers,

My name is Rachel, and I am head of product here at The Free Press. That means I spend a lot of my time thinking about one question: How do we get you to the stories you’ll love, faster?

We publish more every day than any one person has time to read. Investigations, columns, interviews, debates . . . you’ve told us you want all of it. You’ve also told us you don’t have all day to consume it. Fair!

So, my team built something new: For You, a curated feed that learns what stories you actually want to read and directs you straight toward them. If you missed an article we think you’ll love, you’ll find it there. It’s the only For You page that makes you smarter the more you scroll.

Here’s how it works. Every time you engage with The Free Press—finish a story, follow a topic, like a writer—For You fine-tunes your recommendations. The result is an experience built specifically to your tastes.

For You is available only in The Free Press app. To gain access, download the app today.

Download the app

Don’t worry, the Free Press emails you receive aren’t going anywhere. Think of For You as the place to go when you want more of what you care about and less of everything else.

See you in the app,

Rachel

It’s Friday, October 9. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: The “New York Times” whistleblower speaks out. Garry Kasparov explains why Vladimir Putin wants him dead. Rod Dreher reports from the conservative conference in Jerusalem. And much more.

But first: Kat Rosenfield and Jacob Savage on the problem with millennials.

It is with no pride that I admit: I am a millennial. Is there a more embarrassing cohort to belong to? Sure, the Zoomers are strange, but at least they have some good excuses, with social media looming over them from day one and their formative years wiped out by the pandemic. And for all their faults, the boomers allowed themselves to have some fun while the going was good, and made more than their fair share of great cinema, music, and literature along the way.

Millennials, meanwhile, are responsible for Swiftie-mania, cancel culture, college Quidditch clubs, BuzzFeed, the idea that “phones eat first,” the “millennial pause,” “adulting” . . . I could go on, but it’s all just too insufferable. Think it can’t get any worse? Well, today we bring you two stories exploring the depths of millennial cringe. However, the goal here isn’t just to pan my generation but make sense of them. As a thirtysomething might put it in an Instagram caption: Why are we like this?

First: My fellow millennial parent Jacob Savage asks: What happened to picture books? Once they told children’s stories—about bear hunts and dragons—but today they are morality tales about feminist icons and civil wars, or full of knowing jokes for the adult reading to the child. This, Jacob theorizes, is what happens when millennials are the ones buying the books. Don’t miss this look at why kids are being read books with titles like Viva Frida and The Cat Man of Aleppo, and what makes classics like The Snowy Day great.

Picture books aren’t the only thing that were once made solely for children but increasingly cater to an adult audience. According to a recent alarming statistic, a majority of toys in America are now purchased by adults who do not have children. Fortysomething dads are playing video games. And childless adults are taking over Disneyland. What is going on? For an answer to that question, we turn to millennial author and Free Press columnist Kat Rosenfield. What we are seeing is, according to Kat, “not just delayed adulthood, but a deliberate retreat from it.” Read her column on why millennials are acting like kids.

—Oliver Wiseman

On the three-year anniversary of October 7—the terrorist attack that killed the most Jews since the Holocaust—The Free Press published a series of powerful stories that recall both the devastation of that day and the enormous trauma that still envelops Israel. On the ground in Israel, Polina Fradkin spoke to the families of those lost to suicide in the wake of the attack, the therapists who work around the clock to spot suicidal ideation before it’s too late, and the lingering fear among Israelis that their loved ones could be next. Her story documents the long psychological shadow cast by the atrocity.

For Avinatan Or, October 7 was the start of what would become 738 days in Hamas captivity, after he was abducted from the Nova festival. This week, we’re proud to bring you an exclusive English-language excerpt of his new memoir. It details the horrors of life as a hostage from the early days of his capture to the moment he realizes there might be a way out.

When the terrorist attack took place, Brett McGurk was on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council staff. He was handed the task of negotiating for the release of the hostages still imprisoned by Hamas in tunnels in Gaza. He ran the grueling negotiations for months, and even oversaw the first release. Read our excerpt of his new book, Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages, for an inside look at the high-stakes drama—and how McGurk helped the hostages come home.

The other big story we covered this week was the ongoing fallout from the case of the Cornell 7, seven men who have been accused in a civil suit of raping Jane Doe, a Cornell sophomore. In Ithaca, New York, with the campus ablaze, Olivia Reingold went to a protest at the university, where she spoke to students about their growing anger toward the institution and a “culture that allows rape to go unpunished.”

It’s not just Ithaca that’s divided. Across the country, members of the Chi Phi fraternity who have nothing to do with Cornell’s chapter are being threatened, doxxed, or harassed—even for something as small as sporting their organization’s sweatshirt. Frannie Block and Madeleine Long spoke to the frat brothers who fell victim to the online mob.

And lastly, in a dose of positive news: The Free Press has a new columnist! In addition to his role as a 60 Minutes correspondent, the former New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is joining us as a weekly columnist. We couldn’t be more excited. Click below to read his first post, on what he plans to bring to the table—and why he felt called by our mission. Sign up here to get notified every time he writes.

In 2018, I wrote my first and last superhero story, an audiobook called A Trick of Light in collaboration with longtime Marvel editor Stan Lee. It was Stan’s last project—he died after the manuscript had been finalized, but before it was recorded and released as an Audible Original—which made the book a very big deal at that year’s San Diego Comic-Con, the annual expo where extravagantly costumed culture vultures gather in ecstatic celebration of all things franchise and fandom. It was on my last day at Comic-Con that someone presented me with a swag bag which included, I was informed, one of the convention’s most coveted objets d’art: a highly collectible, limited edition Funko Pop! statuette of my late collaborator, complete with aviator glasses and trademark mustache. This miniature Stan was made of plastic, as all Funko Pops! are, but painted to look like aged bronze, which gave it an uncanny effect—like an artifact from an ancient civilization that worshipped a pantheon of bobbleheaded gods.

I was holding the statue in my hands when someone sidled up to me and said, “Oh, wow, that’s going to look so great!”—and then, when I looked confused, added, “You know, in your collection,” at which point I understood: My interlocutor believed that I owned more than one of these objects. Not only that, but that I had them on display in my home. In my collection.

My doll collection.

I was, at this time, 37 years old.

On September 23, The Free Press exclusively reported on the lawsuit filed against The New York Times by shareholders who said the paper failed to meet its most basic obligation: to report the truth, and correct itself in a timely manner when it didn’t. The suit relied on the testimony of an unnamed whistleblower who worked on the New York Times video desk for nearly a decade. In an exclusive interview with The Free Press, the 48-year-old whistleblower—who we’re identifying by her middle name, Guta—gives color to her time at the paper. Her account is based on her records of Slack conversations, the company’s internal editing history, project databases, and hours of meetings, all of which have been reviewed exclusively by The Free Press. —The Editors

On Guta’s first day at The New York Times, she walked into the newsroom and took a selfie. “I was just so excited,” she told me. “It was my dream job.”

That was 2016.

By 2019, that excitement had started to fade. In April of that year, the Times published a cartoon depicting Israel’s prime minister as a guide dog wearing a Star of David collar, led on a leash by the U.S. president, who was donning a kippah. The Times later acknowledged the image “included antisemitic tropes,” and its editorial board called it “appalling.” The following month, publisher A.G. Sulzberger wrote to the entire company that the Times was “updating our unconscious bias training to ensure it includes a direct focus on antisemitism.” In Guta’s 10 years at the paper she said the training was never implemented to her knowledge, despite her raising it five or six separate times.

And the bias didn’t stop, she said.

Last week I had the privilege of sitting down with one of the foremost historians of our time, Simon Sebag Montefiore. As I write this, his work has never felt more urgent.

“We’re in a new world of counterhistory,” he said recently. “A new world of counterhistory where neither historical facts nor present-time facts matter if they don’t fit the ideologic…

Max sailed off, in and out of weeks and almost over a year, for the land of the Wild Things. In The Snowy Day, Peter went out, alone, into the city. In Blueberries for Sal, a little girl wandered off on a hillside, mistook a bear for her mother, and lived to tell the tale.

Once upon a time, picture books told children’s stories. Not anymore.

Hello, readers. I am not your dear leader Nellie Bowles, who left a Post-it on my desk that read “gone fishing, good luck!” I’ll be doing my best Nellie impression this week. Unlike your TGIF commissar, I am short and blonde. But still, let’s give it a try.

Two quick things: We have new merch. Baby onesies for your free thinkers in training and book club shirts and tote bags for the childless like myself. We also have a merch competition happening. Readers can pitch their ideas in the Forum. The winner will see their idea brought to life and receive a merch bundle.

Now it’s been quite an exciting week in the US of A, by which I mean I’m applying for Polish citizenship. Let’s get into it!

→ The people doth protest too much: This week marked the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attacks, during which Hamas terrorists killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and kidnapped another 251 of them into Gaza. On that day in 2023, I was in grad school at Columbia University refining two passions of mine: writing and wasting my parents’ money. I had no idea what would come next, in the Middle East or on campus, which became its own bizarre little political battlefield in the years that followed. All the time, people told me the protesters “just want peace.” Part of wanting peace was going out to celebrate on October 7 because, you know, what a tranquil day. On the first anniversary of October 7, I took this photo of the student protesters at Columbia, which gave me the sneaking suspicion they didn’t want peace:

I made lots of friends!

This year, Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism said more than 250 demonstrations against Israel were planned across the globe, including 75 on October 7 itself. Eleven people, some of whom were protesting outside the office of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, were arrested at pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London. They chanted “stop killing babies,” and “we will see you in The Hague.”

In New York, far away from The Hague, pro-Palestinian protesters found an exciting new genocide culprit: Mayor Zohran Mamdani. In a demonstration of the warmth of collectivism, Mamdani managed to piss off everyone this October 7 anniversary: Jews and jihadis. He started by infuriating the pro-Israel crowd with a post that included a drive-by mourning over the massacre of October 7 before a much more passionate outcry over Israel’s response to it.

Here’s the post:

When he said October 7 is unthinkable, I think he meant “don’t think about it.” But my favorite part of this is that he rounded down to 1,100 (about 1,200 people were murdered). In three years of October 7 coverage, I have never seen anyone round down. Next year he’ll post that Hamas killed “at least one Israeli.” Technically true! Touché, Mr. Mayor.

Then, in the evening, Mamdani attended a vigil in Union Square organized by a group called “Israelis for Peace,” meant to honor those who died on October 7—and, notably, Palestinians who died in the subsequent war. He was met by protesters who booed him, screamed at him, and chanted “Zohran, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” Ah, remember that one, Zohran? They also shouted “Mayor Mamdani, take a side, justice for Palestine.”

He just hates being there. He wants to tell the protesters, “Guys, I’m obviously on your team, cool it,” but he can’t. It’s awesome.

→ Checking in with Mamdani’s private wife, the one who graces magazine covers: This week brought a report that Rama Duwaji, First Lady of New York City, has illustrated two bottles for Olive Odyssey, a luxury Palestinian olive oil brand. One of the bottles is nearly $100. She also illustrated the bottle honoring Khalil Abu Osba, apparently a militant who shot down a British plane. Honestly, Duwaji’s not a bad artist. I hope she’ll do my portrait, but maybe I have to hijack a plane first. The company has praised olive trees watered with “martyrs’ blood” (okay, but the Jews are bloodthirsty?) and called Israeli salad “food appropriation.” Olive Odyssey oil is also used in a line of weed chocolate. “This bar & it’s [sic] THC content works to calm my overwhelm/sadness + helps me recharge to advocate for freedom from occupation & safety for all Palestinians, every single day. [T]hank you for doing a collab that is truly meaningful,” one reviewer said. Why do we need food and social movement collabs? Next we’ll see ConservaTea, a calming bedtime blend packed with hydroxychloroquine and subtle notes of meth.

Last week, social media influencer Alix Earle went viral for admitting that she’s never read a book—despite graduating from the University of Miami with a business degree. Predictably, the internet pounced on her, but Suzy and Dan disagree. In this week’s episode of Second Thought, the two break down the virtue of staying in your lane, and explain why A…

America is running low on munitions, its shipyards can’t keep pace, and the materials its weapons depend on too often run through China. Michael Cadenazzi is the Pentagon official charged with turning that around, putting billions of dollars behind the factories, materials, and supply chains that make America’s military power possible. He joins School o…

Garry Kasparov came to The Free Press office earlier this week with a new member of his team: his security guard. In mid-September, the U.S. government had charged five alleged Russian agents of plotting to assassinate a “prominent Russian dissident” living in the U.S. Although the dissident was identified only as “Victim-1,” there was very little doubt it was Kasparov, who is a wanted man in his home country, from which he fled in 2013, and whose anti-Putin group, Free Russia Forum, was listed as a “terrorist organization” in 2025 by Vladimir Putin’s government.

“I mean, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to make this deduction,” he told me during the course of our lengthy interview. Russia has killed others who have crossed Putin over the years, after all. What’s more, the FBI recently told Kasparov that he needed to be “cautious and look out for your security.” As well he should: All five defendants remain at large, including the alleged hitmen in the U.S. who had been hired to target Kasparov. Kasparov’s Free Russia Forum co-founder, Ivan Tyutrin, lives in Lithuania and is seemingly included in the indictment as “Victim-2.” Lithuanian officials have told Tyutrin that his life was in grave danger.

“I’m not privy to Putin’s conversations, of course,” Kasparov said. “But I would be surprised if [the assassination plot] could have moved that far along without a direct order from Putin.”

Watch my conversation with Garry Kasparov here: