New York Magazine April 1-14, 2019

How to understand someone else’s marriage? We interrogated dozens of couples (and a throuple) to see what makes them work—or not (p.24). For more of “Marriages: An Investigation,” go to nymag.com. ON THE COVER AND THIS PAGE: Photographs by New York Magazine, based on photographer Ted Spagna’s “Sleep” series. For these pictures, we invited couples to our studio outfitted with an automatic camera, then left them alone for a half-hour to do whatever they do in bed. The whole idea of “Treat people the way you want to be treated,” the reality is it’s a very selfish thing. It really should be “Treat people the way they want to be treated.” —Simone Jenkins (married to Adam Powell) Three Rules for a Good Marriage 1. No television in the home. We…

1 For New York’s most recent cover story, Adam Sternbergh and Boris Kachka took stock of the booming podcast industry (“The Great Pod Rush Has Only Just Begun,” March 18–31). Pop Culture Happy Hour, which was listed in Nicholas Quah’s rundown of 100 podcasts worth listening to, was one of several programs to respond: “When you’ve been around as long as we have, in a podcast market as crowded and ever-changing as this one, getting this kind of a shout-out can still bring a tear to these rheumy old eyes.” Several readers lamented the lack of diversity in both the industry and the creators highlighted in the story. By the Book co-host Kristen Meinzer noted, “There’s a lot of great stuff in this story. But there’s also the implication that…

THE PERIOD OF TIME since Attorney General William Barr released his summary of Robert Mueller’s investigation has been the most ebullient one for Republicans since the 2016 election. The pattern is familiar: vindication and emotional displays of dominance on the right, shock and searching self-doubt mixed with intense recriminations on the left. What unites both sides, victors and vanquished alike, is a belief that Trump has rewritten the rules of American politics. Just as he violated every law of running for president and still won, he broke every rule a president must supposedly follow when under investigation. For generations, Americans have been instructed that “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” Every defense lawyer warns subjects of investigation not to shoot their mouths off on television and especially not to…

Joe Biden CLASS OF 1961 Born in Pennsylvania, he graduated from Catholic prep school Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware. Cory Booker CLASS OF 1987 Nicknamed “Sugar,” Booker was a varsity football player at Northern Valley Regional High School in Old Tappan, New Jersey. Pete Buttigieg CLASS OF 2000 “Mayor Pete” started his political career as class president of South Bend, Indiana’s St. Joseph High School. Julián Castro CLASS OF 1992 Castro posed with a very ’90s backdrop at San Antonio’s Thomas Jefferson High School 17 years before he became mayor. Kirsten Gillibrand CLASS OF 1984 The future senator, pictured as a sophomore in 1982, would graduate from the Emma Willard School in Troy, New York. Kamala Harris CLASS OF 1981 At Westmount High near Montreal, she remembered long-distance phone calls…

TOM STEYER, the Democratic megadonor turned impeachment activist, has a distinct look when he thinks he’s saying something so obvious it might be embarrassing for you if you’re not keeping up. He smiles a little, his eyebrows shoot up his forehead, and he tilts his head back as if he’s expecting a punch line. It’s been two days since the attorney general’s summary of Robert Mueller’s report went public, and Steyer is using this look a lot. I’m asking if his strategy has changed now that we know Mueller didn’t find evidence of Trump-campaign collusion with Russia, and he’s not having it. “We’ve said from the beginning this isn’t about the Mueller report; this is a broad sense of criminality,” he says, on the edge of exasperation. We’re sitting across…

WHEN THOSE WHO WANT to make America great again wax nostalgic about the Great America they claim has vanished, what America are they picturing? If they grew up in the second half of the American Century and are white, that nostalgic cultural snapshot might be a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post portrait of rosy-cheeked middle-class familial bliss, or Sheriff Andy and little Opie sauntering to the fishing hole in mythical Mayberry. But no pop-culture staple may more immediately conjure the bygone Great America than Oklahoma!, the Richard Rodgers–Oscar Hammerstein II musical that has been synonymous with sunny American nationalism for more than three-quarters of a century. The coruscating revival that debuts on Broadway this month, the fifth since the original production opened on March 31, 1943, is just one of…