Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, Suzy Weiss celebrates the spring breaker who says, “Who the f— is Ayatollah!?” River Page drinks with the conservative influencer who gets so many death threats she’s got the FBI on speed dial. And as the “Hannah Montana” cast reunites for a 20th anniversary show, Sascha Seinfeld remembers the glorious original.
But first: Why are we so quick now to ask people if they’d like to die?
That’s the question Miriam Lancaster found herself asking last year. The 84-year-old woke up one day with excruciating back pain, was rushed to the emergency room, and was promptly asked by a doctor if she wanted help killing herself.
That’s because Miriam lives in Canada, where physicians are encouraged to ask patients in agony if they want MAID—medical assistance in dying.
“I was stunned,” Miriam writes in her essay today. “No one had even told me what was wrong with me.” She responded to the offer with a firm: No, thank you! And soon, she had a simple diagnosis: She had fractured her sacrum, the tiny bone at the base of the spine. With bed rest, the break healed.
“But being offered MAID changed something in me,” Miriam writes. Before, “I had assumed that in my 80s I would simply slow down: read my books, watch some television.” But the experience “made me want to lean into living.”
So she traveled to Cuba, where she sang, danced, and played piano with locals. Still, she’s haunted by what’s happening in her country—where nearly 1 in 20 deaths is a result of MAID.
We’ve covered the rise of assisted dying extensively here at The Free Press; it’s happening not only in Canada, but also in the Netherlands, and here in the U.S., where New York just became the 13th state to legalize it. Every week, there seems to be a new story about how such legislation fails to distinguish between irredeemable suffering and reversible hopelessness. This past Thursday, for instance, a 25-year-old Spanish woman—who had been left paralyzed from a previous suicide attempt in which she jumped from a building shortly after three men allegedly raped her—was granted permission to seek assisted suicide. Her parents desperately took her to court to try to stop her.
For everyone who is considering assisted suicide, Miriam has a message: “Think very, very carefully about what you’re giving up,” she writes. “The world is way bigger than you can imagine.” That’s what she found—after she chose to live.
—Josh Code
As a pro-Israel Republican who started “Hot Girls for Cuomo” and lives part-time in Saudi Arabia, Emily Austin is not your typical conservative influencer—and she gets a lot of hate for it. “Every time I post my location, I will get something like, ‘I’m gonna Charlie Kirk you. I’m gonna blow your brains out,’ ” she told River Page over two drinks. They chatted about which death threats she takes seriously, why she’s annoyed with Pam Bondi for dragging her into an Epstein files stunt last year, and the time she made fun of Billie Eilish for saying “Fuck ICE” at the Grammys.
What was the death knell of millennial feminism? The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg? The defeat of Kamala Harris? Lindy West’s recent memoir about how her husband cheating on her was actually great? For Suzy Weiss, it was a sign she saw in the park last weekend: “BUY WEED FROM WOMEN: Join the movement.” Read her take on the funeral of fourth-wave feminism—and her celebration of America’s precious, clueless spring breakers.
The jewel in the crown of the Disney Channel—Hannah Montana—is 20 years old, and the cast reunited this week for a nostalgic, slightly silly anniversary special. In honor of the occasion, Sascha Seinfeld reflects on her love of the original show, with its simple premise: that a teenage girl invents a second identity to protect her real one. It turned out to be pretty prescient—because these days, thanks to social media, all girls hide behind their online brand.
Knock Knock, It’s Cupid!
A new batch of ads from single Free Pressers is live on the site! Click here to meet a young man in Iowa serving in the National Guard and at Chick-fil-A; an eagle-spotting, ballet-enjoying corporate professional in Minnesota; or an octogenarian in Israel who won’t let war stop her from finding love.
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, your age, where you live, and what you’re looking for, and send it over to Cupid@TheFP.com.
This week, we’ve published plenty of other pieces worth catching up on, including . . .
How should you spend your weekend? We asked our new international editor, Nick Clairmont, for his recommendations…
📺 Watch . . . the new Netflix stand-up special by Mark Normand, None Too Pleased. The 42-year-old’s new material veers between edgy and corny, truly clever and merely punny, and it’s never pious. He’s in it to make you laugh, not to lecture.
🎵Listen . . . to the new album by Sturgill Simpson, who with his band is now going by the moniker Johnny Blue Skies & the Dark Clouds. The country star with technically perfect vocal range and control has spent a career making albums that buck genre, and this strange, sexy, funky album keeps it up. Just as interestingly, Mutiny After Midnight has been released on every format except digital streaming. To hear it, you have to go outside and find a store that’s selling it on vinyl, cassette, or CD, or find a retailer online. It’s the first album since 2023 to hit the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart without existing on the internets. Speaking of which . . .
🚶🏼♀️Walk . . . outside. Consumption is for the dark days of winter; it’s spring! Find a park, a hiking trail, your own yard, whatever, and go find the things that grow. Find a plant you particularly like the look of, and learn its name. Find out what kind of soil it grows in and when it blooms. (This year, I am learning how to plant and tend raspberry and blackberry bushes.) Pl@ntNet is a great app for identifying species from just a picture. Nobody has ever regretted being able to see the green, growing world around them a little more knowledgeably.
Last but not least, a beautiful thing to feast your eyes on: Last Friday, Andie Dinkin opened one of her first solo shows in Soho at Charles Moffett Gallery for her new exhibition, In the Spirit World. Our art director Clara Grusq shares one of her favorite paintings in the show: an intoxicating ode to Jean Cocteau.
That’s all, folks! Have a great weekend.
Nick! Yes to all things outside! Do you have a good resource for the learning to tend blackberry bushes? I am tending two and aside from composting and fertilizer haven’t done much. Enjoy!
"There is only one serious question in philosophy and that is suicide" - Albert Camus
Regarding the Purpose of Life, Paramahansa Yogananda wrote, "God sent us on earth to play in his drama for awhile and not get entangled in it."
In my opinion, the purpose of life is to gain a relationship with god and to enjoy the life given us. I recall my ultra-Christian aunt who spent her last ten years in a nursing home, deaf and blind. Is this living?
Just as COVID and the bio-weapons used to create mutants were once the topic du jour on Substack, now it is all about euthanasia. When the experience of life has passed, it is time to move on.