Science says lasting relationships come down to—you guessed it—kindness and generosity. Every day in June, the most popular wedding month of the year, about 13,000 American couples will say “I do,” committing to a lifelong relationship that will be full of friendship, joy, and love that will carry them forward to their final days on this earth. Except, of course, it doesn’t work out that way for most people. The majority of marriages fail, either ending in divorce and separation or devolving into bitterness and dysfunction. Of all the people who get married, only three in ten remain in healthy, happy marriages, as psychologist Ty Tashiro points out in his book The Science of Happily Ever After, which was published earlier this year. Social scientists first started studying marriages by observing them in action in the 1970s in response to a crisis: Married couples were divorcing at unprecedented rates. Worried about the impact these divorces would have on the children of the broken marriages, psychologists decided to cast their scientific net on couples, bringing them into the lab to observe them and determine what the ingredients of a healthy, lasting relationship were.

Was each unhappy family unhappy in its own way, as Tolstoy claimed, or did the miserable marriages all share something toxic in common? My President Was Black A history of the first African American White House—and of what came next In the waning days of President Barack Obama’s administration, he and his wife, Michelle, hosted a farewell party, the full import of which no one could then grasp. It was late October, Friday the 21st, and the president had spent many of the previous weeks, as he would spend the two subsequent weeks, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton. Things were looking up. Polls in the crucial states of Virginia and Pennsylvania showed Clinton with solid advantages. The formidable GOP strongholds of Georgia and Texas were said to be under threat. The moment seemed to buoy Obama. He had been light on his feet in these last few weeks, cracking jokes at the expense of Republican opponents and laughing off hecklers. At a rally in Orlando on October 28, he greeted a student who would be introducing him by dancing toward her and then noting that the song playing over the loudspeakers—the Gap Band’s “Outstanding”—was older than she was.

Why Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy In 2009, Ford brought its new supermini, the Fiesta, over from Europe in a brave attempt to attract the attention of young Americans. It passed out 100 of the cars to influential bloggers for a free six-month test-drive, with just one condition: document your experience online, whether you love the Fiesta or hate it.sushi making kit crate and barrel Young bloggers loved the car. buy nori sushi sheetsAfter a brief burst of excitement, in which Ford sold more than 90,000 units over 18 months, Fiesta sales plummeted. food delivery london sw8As of April 2012, they were down 30 percent from 2011.jiro dreams of sushi subtitles multiply

The company is trying to solve a puzzle that’s bewildering every automaker in America: How do you sell cars to Millennials (a k a Generation Y)? The fact is, today’s young people simply don’t drive like their predecessors did. In 2010, adults between the ages of 21 and 34 bought just 27 percent of all new vehicles sold in America, down from the peak of 38 percent in 1985. Miles driven are down, too. sakae sushi menu 2013Even the proportion of teenagers with a license fell, by 28 percent, between 1998 and 2008.sushi bento box toronto John Gress / Reuterssushi delivery london putney Barack Obama's Enduring Faith in America In his farewell address, the president warned of threats to the nation’s tradition of democracy—none more than from inside—and rebuked Donald Trump, but sought to rally the country around shared ideals.

In his final speech to the nation as the 44th president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama offered a strong defense of American democracy and pluralism, telling the nation that its form of government relies on goodwill and tolerance. “Our Constitution is a remarkable, beautiful gift,” Obama said. “But it’s really just a piece of parchment. It has no power on its own. We, the people, give it power—with our participation, and the choices we make. Whether or not we stand up for our freedoms. Whether or not we respect and enforce the rule of law.  America is no fragile thing. But the gains of our long journey to freedom are not assured.” Speaking at McCormick Place in Chicago—just a couple miles south of Grant Park, where he first spoke to the nation as president-elect in November 2008—the president outlined his major accomplishments and thanked voters, his family, and his staff. But Obama also outlined what he saw as a three-pronged threat to American democracy, in a speech that could only be heard as a detailed rebuke of Donald Trump, the man who will replace him in the White House in 10 days’ time.

In my favorite episode of Chef’s Table, a new, six-episode series premiering on Netflix this Sunday, April 26, the famous Argentine chef Francis Mallmann guts a couple of brook trout, then washes them clean by dragging them around in a lake. It's just a regular day in Mallmann land. Francis Mallmann roasts chickens over a fire in Chef’s Table. Then he uses soft, wet clay he's just dug from the water to seal the fish up, and places the bundle on a low fire to slowly cook in its own steam. It's an old, uncomplicated technique, but it's beautiful to watch him work. The best moments in this new series, each episode profiling a different chef around the world, let you quietly observe what goes on behind the scenes, equal parts food porn and character study. This is Mallmann in his natural habitat, the vast wilderness, speaking about what he does in a characteristically poetic way. Things could easily get goofy, and sometimes they do: "When you build a fire, it's a bit like making love," Mallmann says at one point.

Later he reads poetry by the dying firelight. An hour-long boat ride takes Mallmann to his home on an island. But David Gelb (who directed the lauded Jiro Dreams of Sushi, about Japanese sushi master Jiro Ono) has created a documentary series that explores complex stories about his subjects, without letting them get too cartoonish. Mallmann is the romantic, wandering the hills for firewood, reading poetry by the firelight, but he's more than that, too. Red pepper egg with everything, a dish from Dan Barber. As Mallmann grills whole lambs, and hangs chickens over the coals, the episode goes into his past, to tell the story of how Mallmann, who was born in Buenos Aires but raised in Patagonia, came to reject French fine dining and "making fancy French food for rich Argentines," and went on to champion his own rustic, homegrown cooking techniques and ingredients. It didn't happen overnight. Chances are you're already familiar with the other chef subjects, which include Massimo Bottura of Osteria Francescana in Modena, Italy;

Ben Shewry of Attica in Melbourne; and Magnus Nilsson of Fäviken in Järpen, Sweden. Two episodes feature American chefs: Dan Barber of Blue Hill in NYC and Niki Nakayama of N/Naka in Los Angeles. I was skeptical of the series at first. Do all these chefs deserve the Jiro treatment? After all, these chefs are famous—properly, internationally famous—and their stories have been told so many times, in so many glossy magazines, that I wondered if there would be any surprises. Salted kangaroo from Attica. Chef’s Table goes deeper into each chef's story and often nudges a bit at uncomfortable themes that most puff pieces tend to leave out, like Shewry's harsh financial struggles. Nakayama, who was not expected by her immediate family to succeed, talks about this only briefly, but the episode goes back to this theme of drive and perseverance in subtle, moving ways. The "mad genius" is a tired trope, but all these chefs have it in them in one way or another, and it's fascinating to watch it unfold.