Welcome to The Weekend Press! Today, River Page has two drinks with the AI policy adviser who thinks “a lot of crazy and destabilizing shit might go down.” Doree Lewak wonders if playing mah-jongg will make your kid smarter. And: What should you read this summer? Abigail Shrier, Douglas Murray, and many more Free Pressers have recommendations . . .

But first: Happy Father’s Day!

When’s the worst possible time to decide to have a baby?

When you’re about to go to war? When you’ve just lost your job?

P.G. Sittenfeld and his wife decided to try for a second child when he was battling his way through the courts, trying to prove his innocence after being implicated in an FBI sting.

There are so many twentysomethings who don’t want kids, and when you ask them why, the answer boils down to: The future is uncertain and scary. They need to make more money first. They don’t want to bring a baby into a world that’s burning.

But in his essay today, P.G. gently suggests that uncertainty isn’t a good reason to reject fatherhood. He should know. When he was eventually sentenced to 16 months in prison, his wife was 32 weeks pregnant.

“Being an inmate and a father at the same time was anguishing,” he writes. Still, he never questioned his decision for a second. Don’t miss his moving case for becoming a dad—despite it all.

Even for those who aren’t in prison, fatherhood is no cakewalk—and society doesn’t offer a ton of good blueprints. “The media has stereotyped fathers as goofy, hapless fools who depend on their superhero wives,” Alex Berenson writes, in our second story today about fatherhood. “The only good dad is a feminized ‘gentle parent’ who never raises his voice, is always ready with a hug, and never lets his kid take a risk or get hurt.”

“In other words,” says Alex, “the only good dad is a mom.”

But in his piece, he rejects this very modern idea, and makes the case that dads must be free to be dads—with a few tips that any father might find useful . . .

Hollywood may have a long history of daddy issues—but there’s a new movie that finally gets it right: Toy Story 5. Pixar’s latest offering, which came out yesterday, follows our cowboy hero Woody—now a rotund, balding father to dozens of discarded toys—as he and the gang face a new villain. But according to Liel Leibovitz, the real story is about fathers confronting perhaps the hardest realization of parenthood: Their children are becoming adults, and there’s nothing they can do to stop it.

“Our kids grow up,” Liel writes in his marvelous review, “and we don’t get to decide how or when that happens. All we can do is be there to help them along as best as we can.”

The Free Press • Culture and Ideas

The Free Press Summer Reading List

Summer is here! And that means, if you’re lucky, some long, lazy days when you can, at long last, immerse yourself in a few great new books. But which ones are actually worth your precious time? We asked a dozen contributors: What’s the best book you’ve read that didn’t exist last summer? Douglas Murray told us about a masterpiece of a novel about Gustav Mahler’s final voyage. Abigail Shrier said she loved Lena Dunham’s memoir, Famesick. The result is a list you’ll find in no other publication. Enjoy! Read story ›

River Page • Two Drinks

Two Drinks with. . .the Trump Adviser Headed to OpenAI

This week, the U.S. government effectively banned Anthropic’s AI models—saying they were a national security risk—and, once again, America found itself asking: If robots are about to upend society, how are we supposed to prepare? “I think you just gotta let it play out. We don’t have enough information to make a good judgment about what to do,” says Dean Ball. That is an unsettling opinion, given that it was literally his job to advise the Trump administration on AI policy. This week, he joined OpenAI to do the same thing. Before his new job, Ball met River Page for two drinks in Manhattan. He talked about the real reason people rebel against data centers, whether SpaceX is overvalued, and how “a lot of crazy and destabilizing shit might go down.” Read story ›

Doree Lewak • Culture and Ideas

The Hottest New After-School Activity? Mah-Jongg.

A tile-based game from China, which used to be associated with 80-year-old bubbies in retirement homes, is taking American kids by storm. “I always ask my mom, ‘Can I play mah-jongg with you?’ ” one 11-year-old told Doree Lewak. Is this a wholesome sign that kids really do want to tear their eyes away from their screens and hang out? Or just another way for tiger moms to optimize their kids? “Everyone’s looking for an edge, a way to show how their kid is a little bit smarter, a little bit more creative and better at problem-solving than the next kid,” said a mom who is hosting a mini-mahj night in the Hamptons this summer. Read story ›