Welcome back to The Weekend Press! In which Elliot Ackerman tells you how to get engaged and Kat Rosenfield engages with a Netflix series long past its sell-by date, River Page has a ridiculous round of drinks with George Santos, and Abigail Shrier dishes out some tough love to a man thinking of leaving his wife. Plus: Our staff recommend their favorite kids’ books.

But first: What should we do with spare embryos?

In vitro fertilization has been a godsend for couples otherwise unable to conceive a child. It’s also been a boon for those who know they want children but aren’t yet ready. Yet it also raises thorny questions for these couples, such as what to do with the embryos they do not use.

Justine el-Khazen and her husband welcomed two children into the world via IVF. But they created 15 embryos in total, nine of which appeared viable. The question of what should happen to the ones they didn’t use got el-Khazen meditating on a host of uncomfortable questions: When does life begin? Are the embryos she created just “cells in a lab,” as one doctor assured her, or already tiny humans? And if they really are just an inert cluster of biological material, why are some tech companies so convinced they know what sort of humans they would turn out to be through a system called polygenic risk scoring? “In promising parents tall, strapping geniuses, technologists want cells in a lab to be people, and people to be cells in a lab,” she writes.

El-Khazen tackles all this and more in a remarkable essay. Along the way, she talked to women in Alabama who might soon lose the right to terminate an unwanted embryo—and while none of them wanted to surrender that privilege, they were all ambivalent about destroying them to begin with.

Regardless of how you feel about IVF, abortion, or when life starts, this is a must-read look at the questions we all need to grapple with as we race into a future where technologies like this get more advanced, and more common.

—The Editors

Before we get to our other stories, don’t forget to tune in tonight to see our own Bari Weiss talk life, faith, and loss with Erika Kirk; 8 p.m. ET on CBS. Meanwhile, Kat Rosenfield explains why the final season of Stranger Things doesn’t work; Eli Lake unpacks why Jews wrote some of the most famous Christmas songs; Tyler Cowen says: Let the kids go on social media; and Elena Bridgers writes about the downsides of playing with your kids.

How should you spend your weekend? We asked Josh Code for recommendations. . .

📚 Read . . . Taking Manhattan, by Russell Shorto. New Yorkers will know from many a land acknowledgment that we are living on the unceded land of the Lenape tribe—taken by the Dutch in 1626. But the lesser-known—and arguably more important—“taking” of Manhattan actually happened 38 years later, when British colonel Richard Nicolls wrested control of America’s most famous island from its then-ruler, Dutch colonist Peter Stuyvesant. Historian Russell Shorto digs into the contest of wills between the two men that shaped America’s prerevolutionary history, drawing upon newly translated documents to reveal dozens of larger-than-life characters that turned my view of American colonial history upside-down: the Jewish butcher who fought for full citizenship, the Native American woman whose prescient warning of British conquest was ignored by the Dutch, and the enslaved African woman who petitioned for her freedom—and won.

📺 Watch . . . Rental Family. In my pick for the feel-good movie of the year, Brendan Fraser stars as Phillip, a down-on-his-luck expat actor in Tokyo who gets hired to play stand-in roles in the lives of lonely strangers—fiancé, father, best friend. When a Japanese woman hires him to play her daughter’s long-absent father, hijinks and hilarity ensue—and their newfound bond blurs the line between real and rehearsed. Fraser is a joy to watch. If you’ve ever wished for a more upbeat—but equally profound—alternative to Lost in Translation, look no further. I laughed, I cried, and I booked a plane ticket to Tokyo afterward.

🍳 Eat . . . Alison Roman’s Spiced Chickpea Stew with Coconut and Turmeric, aka “The Stew.” This recipe is famous for a reason. It is the coziest, tastiest stew that I can’t live without in the winter—I make it once every couple weeks from October through April. It’s delicious, easy to shop for, and keeps really well in the fridge for a few days of leftovers. Make it “Code-style” for extra protein: Air-fry some turmeric-seasoned chicken, chop it up, toss it in, and enjoy.

Last but not least: A lesson in dealing with profound grief through humor from Conan O’Brien and Will Arnett on the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast.

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