Welcome to the first Weekend Press of 2026! It’s a bumper edition. Two Drinks with the youngest female billionaire. Kat Rosenfield has a message for the artists who don’t want to perform at The Trump Kennedy Center. Abigail Shrier writes to a mom of three who’s fallen out of love with her husband. Kara Kennedy breaks down the hand-wringing obituaries of Brigitte Bardot. And much more.
But first. . .
Mainstream Christianity is having a tough time. Especially in the UK, where church attendance has dropped by 21 percent in the last decade. But on a remote Scottish island, a Romanian monk with a master’s in creative writing is trying something new.
As a young man, this Orthodox devotee, known as Father Seraphim, was engrossed by the story of an ancient order of monks who lived on the tiny rocky island of Iona, the original home of Celtic Christianity.
And so, he decided he wanted to revive it. To raise money, he traveled to the U.S. “People there asked me if we had a business plan or a vision,” he tells reporter Huw Paige in today’s wonderful piece. “And I had to be very blunt and say I have no idea what I’m doing.”
This is the story of how—with some thousand-year-old teachings, a YouTube channel, and a tiny wooden chapel—a handful of nuns and monks built something new in a place where everything is very old.
After the death of Brigitte Bardot, there were a lot of headlines like this one: “Should France Honour Brigitte Bardot?” Once upon a time, writes Kara Kennedy, the answer would’ve been obvious: Yes. She was a cultural icon, so famous she has a dress style named after her. But we live in a world where obituaries have become checklists of ideological failures. We saw it with Charlie Kirk, and Rob Reiner, and Brian Thompson—and now with the late sex kitten.
It’s been a big year for Luana Lopes Lara, who recently became the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. It’s all thanks to Kalshi, the slick prediction-market platform she set up, which was illegal until Lopes Lara effectively took the U.S. government to court. She works till 10 p.m. every day, but she made time for Two Drinks with Maya Sulkin; they talked about everything from ballet to Luigi Mangione, and Lopes Lara admitted: “I don’t even know what ‘girlboss’ means.”
When you’re raising three kids under 7 together, how are you supposed to feel about your partner? Is there something wrong if you don’t get the butterflies you used to? Would you be better off burning down the marriage and finding yourself a new person to love? This week our advice columnist Abigail Shrier writes to a reader who’s asking these questions.
Do you remember the last time you read a book that changed you? It’s one of the best feelings in the world. But, asks Elliot Ackerman in his latest column, “with so much to read, how do we find these books, the ones that have the potential to move us, to live within us long after we’ve finished the last page?” As ever, his advice is essential.
If Elliot’s piece hasn’t got you sold on the idea of picking up a good book this winter, then Joseph Epstein’s might just get you over the line. The great literary critic writes beautifully about how our perceptions of a story can change over time—and why you need to be selective about what you’re reading when you’re in your 80s.
When Trump enraged the D.C. establishment by renaming the Kennedy Center, writes Kat Rosenfield, critics of the president presented “a binary choice for artists: cancel your Kennedy Center appearance as an act of resistance, or take the stage and be labeled a collaborator.” It’s not quite that simple.
“It’s a lot of sizzle for not much steak.” That’s Suzy Weiss’s verdict on “Marty Supreme,” the Ping-Pong biopic that Timothée Chalamet is hoping will earn him an Oscar. During the publicity campaign, he’s done some hysterical things to persuade onlookers that he’s a star for the ages; don’t miss Suzy’s assessment of his performance, on-screen and off.
We’ve published plenty of other pieces this week that’ll help you procrastinate on your New Year’s resolutions:
As life returns after the holiday season, how should you spend the first week of 2026? We asked our reporter River Page for his suggestions…
📖 Read…Eileen, by Ottessa Moshfegh. It’s about a strange young woman who works at a boys’ prison and dreams of life in the big city. That is, when she’s not dealing with her paranoid alcoholic father or stalking one of the guards she has a crush on. When the prison hires a glamorous new counselor called Rebecca Saint John, Eileen thinks she’s finally made a friend. But things get very strange from there. Come for the freak factor, stay for the twist ending.
🎧 Listen…to Ethel Cain’s album Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You. It was my favorite record of 2025. A story runs through it that’s kind of a prequel to her considerably darker 2022 debut album, Preacher’s Daughter, which is about a teenage runaway who falls victim to a cannibalistic serial killer. Nobody ever really thought to make Southern Gothic pop before, and thank God someone finally has. If you’ve ever wondered what handing Flannery O’Connor a synthesizer might have resulted in, this is for you.
💵 Buy. . . a membership at a cheap gym. Here’s the thing: You may or may not keep your New Year’s resolution to get fit. You may think that spending more money will motivate you to work out more. It will not, and also, wandering around a gym that looks like a Russian oligarch’s dacha will only depress you. You need to be among the masses: There is nothing in this world more motivating than seeing hot people with no money.
The Weekend Press was saddened to learn of the death of Cecilia Giménez, a Spanish woman who went viral late in life for her efforts to restore a fresco of Jesus Christ in her small town in Spain—which gave the world “Monkey Christ.”
That’s all, folks! Tell us what you think about this edition of The Weekend Press—or just tell us your New Year’s resolutions; we’re at Weekend@TheFP.com.
The Free Press earns a commission from any purchases made through all book links in this article.
Frank’s comment led me to reading Larissa P.’s excellent story, taking me back to hitching through Europe in 1981 and the kindness of so many strangers. Thank you Larissa (and Frank!)
What wonderful essay by Larissa P. As an old dude I remember hitchhiking and meeting strangers all the time. The memory of her mom having beds & cots ready for stranded strangers brought warm sensations. Her helter skelter college life of impulsive irresponsibility hit home. Those kind strangers are still with us. I'm one of them. Life is what we choose it to be.