Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, Joe Nocera speaks to former Nebraska governor Bob Kerrey, who took a meeting with Jeffrey Epstein—and just resigned because of it. We have an exclusive excerpt from Kat Rosenfield’s new novel, set in the darkest woods of Maine. Maya Sulkin speaks to a young mom who went from OnlyFans model to devout Catholicism. And more!

But first: What happens when an entire generation of girls is taught to hate men?

“I dont have parents, i have a mom and dad who don’t love each other, it hurts,” says the text on the screen as a young woman sobs.

This is what Freya India found on TikTok last year, while flicking through the hashtags #divorce and #divorcedparents.

“I was born in 1999. Growing up, I don’t remember many people talking to me about divorce,” she writes in today’s essay. “My parents split when I was 3, but by the time I was old enough to understand what that meant, family breakdown was so common it never felt worth mentioning.”

But now her generation has come of age, and is analyzing their childhood online. “You weren’t crazy,” says one TikTok caption, “you just realized that having divorced parents affected you because now you’re in constant belief that love isn’t real.”

Is it any wonder that Gen Z doesn’t know how to form relationships? “Imagine you are a teenage girl whose father left, and you believe all men are untrustworthy,” writes Freya. Then imagine you’re scrolling through Instagram, and you come across adults who make money by reinforcing that bleak opinion. Because before most Gen-Z girls had been kissed, they’d been bombarded with advice from dating influencers who built their platforms by saying things like: “The intense chemistry you feel with someone you just met is a huge red flag. Most likely, they are similar to an early caregiver that neglected you & your subconscious mind is attracted to them.”

Meanwhile, on the popular podcast Call Her Daddy—which averages around five million weekly listeners—­host Alex Cooper reminds girls to never relax into the relationship, not even after marriage. “They still hate you, and they’re still cheating on you, until they prove otherwise.”

Maybe Gen-Z girls were taught to hate men. To understand how this has happened, read Freya’s gripping essay—which is adapted from her forthcoming book, GIRLS®:

The Generation Raised to Doubt Love Freya India Read full story

Two Drinks with . . . Bob Kerrey, Who’s Not Asking for Your Forgiveness for Meeting Epstein

Joe Nocera

Do you want to know what it’s like to be collateral damage in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal? Bob Kerrey, the 82-year-old former Nebraska governor, then senator, resigned from the board of a clean energy company this week because the Epstein files revealed he’d taken a meeting with the pedophile in 2013—as so very many powerful people did. But when Kerrey spoke to Joe Nocera on Thursday, he said a few things that surprised our reporter. “I’m not sitting here saying I’m damaged,” he told Joe. “I wasn’t forced to resign.” Read full story

The Children Are Our Future and They Want to Be Chinese

River Page

Drinking a plain mug of hot water. Squatting on the sidewalk. Eating a hard-boiled egg—and just a hard-boiled egg—with chopsticks. On TikTok, the latest nonsensical trend among young Americans is “Chinamaxxing”—that is, adopting stereotypically Chinese habits, and saying things like: “You’ve met me at a very Chinese time in my life.” What’s going on? River Page is here to guide you through this strange development—and also has a theory about why “The Traitors” is the best of all the reality television shows. Read full story

Things Worth Remembering: To Sit at the Same Table

Keaton Swett

How do you survive this age of anxiety? Some say: Run. Cut off your family. Protect your peace. Keaton Swett says the opposite: Go home. During the Covid pandemic, he and his wife moved back to the town in New Hampshire where he grew up, and lived alongside his parents, six siblings, a gaggle of nieces and nephews, and a 94-year-old Holocaust-surviving grandmother. On the wall of their new house, they hung a stanza from Sam Walter Foss’s poem “The House by the Side of the Road,” which urges the reader to “be a friend to man.” That’s how you survive. Read full story

Can You Get Away with Murder in the Woods?

Kat Rosenfield

You might know Kat Rosenfield as our sharp, hilarious Free Press columnist, who spends her days commenting on everything from “Bridgerton” to the case of Daniel Penny—but she has another life: as a writer of thrillers. Her latest, “How to Survive in the Woods” has the Free Press office gripped—so we’re delighted to be sharing an exclusive excerpt with you today. It’s the tale of Emma Sharp, a girlboss raised by a prepper, who starts to think her husband might kill her one day—unless she gets to him first. Read full story

You’ll have to wait until publication day, March 10, to read the rest of her novel! That night, Kat will be joining Suzy Weiss live in New York City to launch the book—and you’re invited!