Culture

In a memoir excerpt, Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky recalls how Stalin's purges filled a KGB prison with confiscated classics — and how Plato helped him keep his mind free while the state controlled everything else.

A former Manhattan prosecutor and Goldman Sachs partner spent his retirement studying Aristotle and Hegel instead of coasting — a rebuke, intended or not, to a culture that increasingly outsources thinking to machines.

The designer's exit as 2027 Met Gala honoree came after backlash over his history of antisemitism — but a Free Press podcast is asking why the institutions that celebrated him for decades are only now discovering a conscience.

Economist Tyler Cowen adds up soaring tuition, AI-averse humanities departments, and a shrinking pool of 18-year-olds — and asks whether the degree still pays for itself.

A new conversation with presidential historian Tim Naftali revisits the secret tapes American presidents made of themselves, and one detail says more about power and ego than any speech ever did.

A Louisiana high school English teacher argues that the panic over AI and 'cognitive decline' is overstated — and that banning the technology, not using it, is the real disservice to students.

Philadelphia English teacher Deb Eaton banned artificial intelligence from her classroom in 2023 and says the ban stands because shortcuts, not screens, are the real threat to learning.

In a new essay for The Free Press, Rod Dreher revisits Wendell Berry's small-c conservatism, the sacramental vision that made him a hero to writers who never fit neatly into either party.

A CDC-based analysis cited by Arthur Brooks shows the generation that once lectured Gen X on moderation is now posting the fastest growth in STDs and marijuana use among Americans over 55.

In a personal essay, veteran journalist Peter Richmond recalls a quarter-century of celebrity profiles — and the one subject, Walter Cronkite, he actually admired.

The Wall Street Journal defended running commentary produced with AI assistance as simply modern practice, prompting The Free Press to ask writers across professions how they actually use — or refuse to use — the technology.

Matt Calkins resigned from The Seattle Times after editors killed his column arguing that defending sex-based categories in sports is not transphobia — the breaking point, he says, in a longer pattern of silencing.

A new mother writes to Abigail Shrier: her husband shows every sign of postpartum depression, resents the baby, and demands praise for a quarter of the household load. The columnist weighs in.

Dolly Parton built one of the world's largest children's literacy programs from a one-bedroom log cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee. The Imagination Library now sends over three million books a month. It started with 'I think I can.'

Caitlin Flanagan traces the arc from a one-room Tennessee cabin to a career that outlasted every trend — and asks why the culture took so long to catch up.

A new subscriber book club built around Steinbeck's masterpiece asks a question that never goes out of season: what does it cost to be free?

After six years of grievance-as-content in Montecito, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are reportedly returning to Britain — with three days' notice to a king still undergoing cancer treatment.

Abigail Shrier's advice column takes up a case that is less about inheritance law than about what families owe each other — and what happens when they collect nothing.

The Harvard professor and Free Press columnist argues that Facebook groups for college parents do more harm than good — for the kids and for the parents themselves.

The Babylon Bee CEO sat down with Coleman Hughes on August 17, 2026, to explain how his site beat the fact-checkers — and why winning that fight may have opened a door he didn't mean to open.

A new social-media trend of women undoing their plastic surgery turns out to be less a reckoning than a loop. Columnist Freya India found something darker underneath.

Suzy Weiss and Dan Ahdoot unpack the actor's return to alcohol 'in a more restrained manner' after seven years of sobriety — and the week's other overlooked stories.

A mother mourns a son who still attends family events, works, and pays his own rent. Shrier's diagnosis is bracing: what she has lost is not her son, but her monopoly over him.

Jack Raines, author of 'Young Money,' on the book that made him trade a desk job for 26 countries — and why the trade was worth it.

Investigative journalist Gerald Posner, whose last three books were published by Simon & Schuster, says he will look for another publisher after the house chose to reissue novels by Susan Abulhawa — whose public record of antisemitic statements was, he argues, hiding in plain sight.

Sexual misconduct allegations against Jared Leto, concern over Ariana Grande's health, and the return of the naked steakhouse — Suzy Weiss and Dan Ahdoot sort through the week's stranger dispatches from American culture.

Abigail Shrier answers a mother whose 8-year-old freezes at every challenge — and asks the question most parents are afraid to ask out loud: does a struggling child need a therapist, or something harder to prescribe?

A Brooklyn progressive relocates to upstate New York, fires a pistol for the first time, and finds that proximity to firearms — and to the people who own them — is a more honest education than any policy debate.

The Bronx-born actor who played Salvatore Bonpensiero on 'The Sopranos' was found unresponsive at his home Saturday. He was 80.

Overnight flooding at Chicago's Grant Park forced organizers to delay Saturday's doors in two stages — first to 2 p.m., then to 3 p.m. CT — while Wolf Alice's hour-long set was cut to 30 minutes and Cortis lost ten minutes of their scheduled 50.

Heavy rain scrubbed the 4x Grammy nominee's scheduled set on the T-Mobile Stage Friday — then he walked out during Major Lazer's show instead.

The Marvel series earned critical praise, an Emmy nomination, and 618 million viewing minutes in its debut week. Disney pulled the plug anyway.