photo: Thinkstock

At the therapist's office, the man with the clipboard has been replaced by a woman. That may not seem like a problem, but it is, as Benedict Carey, one of our favorite science reporters, concluded in a recent article in the New York Times. Carey reports that among mental health professionals, men earn only one in five of all master's degrees awarded in psychology, account for less than 10 percent of social workers under the age of 34, make up 10 percent of the American Counseling Association's membership and "appear to be declining among marriage and family therapists." The lack of male therapists presents an obstacle for men who are open to talking to a professional about their problems...but only if that person looks and sounds like them.

If this describes someone you love, you could tell him that, in terms of the research, a psychologist's gender makes little difference in the outcome of therapy. Or you could be a bit more useful. (Even if you don't agree with him, it's his belief that matters—you want him to get help, remember?).

To find out exactly what you can do, we followed up with one of Carey's sources for the article, Ronald F. Levant, EdD, a professor of psychology at the University of Akron, who is recognized as an authority on the psychology of men and masculinity.

As if he wasn't blue-eyed enough, sharp-jawed enough or cut enough (perhaps you too glanced in the open V of his rumpled, unbuttoned shirt in The Hangover?), it also turns out that Bradley Cooper speaks fluent—and very sexy—French.
 
This morning, a drool-inducing video of Cooper chatting away en français with an anchorwoman hit Popeater.com. The mere sound of each romantic Gallic syllable issuing forth from his mouth was enough to cause women all over the world to sigh and men all over the world to cry—or to run out and buy a Rosetta Stone CD.

 
And yet, it all gets so much more dreamy—because, when translated, what Cooper said to the French anchorwoman during their 3-minute-22-second talk about The Hangover Part II and Limitless was so surprisingly deep and thoughtful that we may not recover.  
 
On the Nature of Reality

"I am 36 years old. I know what is important for me in my life. If celebrity had happened to me earlier, it would have been difficult for me to tell what is real and what is...rien de tout (nothing at all)."
 
On the Value of Being Present
"Robert [De Niro] is very present. He knows what he wants. He knows what he believes. And it's very easy to speak with a person like this."
 
On the Importance of Change

"I want to learn. I want to increase my experience."
 
On the Absolute Truth

"George Clooney is the best. Il est le roi (He is the king)!"
 
In search of more Bradley Cooper wisdom, we consulted his speech last September at Georgetown University—the school that sent him to France on an exchange program, where he lived with a French-speaking family. Talking to the throng of young, adoring students, he advised them, "Fall on your face, really—it's the only way you're going to learn."
 
Hmm...we do not mean to be difficult. We want people to learn. But if you look anything like Bradley Cooper, please, we beg of you: Do not fall on your face.

"The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before." — Samuel Johnson

One hundred years ago today, the world's largest ship, the Titanic, was launched into the dark, cold waters of Belfast. Fourteen years ago, the world's first movie to rake in over a billion dollars, Titanic, was released into the dark, warm theaters of America.


The Five-Second Titanic lacks the beauty and mystery of the 1994 regular Titanic. There is a sweep of dreamy music, then a clip of a minor character saying in a fancy English accent, "This ship can't sink." After which, splash, the ship sinks.

I've ruined the joke but not the point: Sometimes, exceptionally complex things in life can be distilled down to a single moment.

A close friend of mine recently told me a story about her old, dear college roommate, Sarah, who didn't come to her mother's funeral. Sarah, my friend told me, had had all kinds of terrible situations with her own mother. Sarah had two kids. Sarah was under a lot of stress at work. Sarah had troubles with intimacy. But Sarah was still a good person and a good friend.

I listened to all this. I groped around for something to say. But what I needed was a video camera in order to tape the 10 minutes that my friend spent talking about Sarah, then cut the footage down to the five seconds during which she said, "Sarah didn't come to my mom's funeral."

Yes, life is complicated and messy. Yes, people do regrettable things for a myriad of understandable reasons. But sometimes five seconds all is we need to tell us what is really going on in a relationship. Then we can spend the next five—or 5,000—seconds figuring out what to do about it.

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Like a crisp white oxford or a little black dress, the long-sleeved striped boatneck tee is a timeless staple. Wear it under a blazer or on its own, with chinos, jeans or cropped black pants, and you can't go wrong.

Julia Leach, the former creative director of Kate Spade, has based her entire new line, Chance, on this one iconic piece. Her soft, lightweight cotton versions are simply irresistible.

            

 Chance, $60 each; ChanceCo.com.               

Even if you think of your family history as generations of boring, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan begs you to reconsider. The former Wall Street Journal fashion reporter stumbled upon all kinds of surprises when she went back to Singapore (where she was born) after being laid off. Tan's book, A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family, is a reminder that asking your mom for a recipe can lead to much more than cooking instructions. Tan has three pieces of advice for drawing out the good stuff:

1. Get out of the living room and into the kitchen. Some of Tan's relatives were skeptical about being "interviewed." It wasn't until Tan and her aunts were immersed in, say, filling pork dumplings that the stories began to unfold. That's when Tan heard about the illegal things her family did in the '60s to make extra money.

On I ran, headed for New Jersey. I ran past laughing people, walking home from work. I ran past couples eating ice cream in tubs, to enjoy it before it melted. I almost ran past my own husband, sitting on the steps of his office, having sent his employees home for the night.
 
I was panting. The dog was wheezing. I held up my backpack in triumph. We had peanut butter, pearls and a computer to live on!
 
My husband sighed. "At least we know what you'll take in case of a fire." He, of course, would have taken our social security cards and birth certificates and other practicalities such as his shoebox of high school cassette tapes for which we have no tape player.
 
It turns out that we are not that unique in our understanding of what's really important. The new site The Burning House documents what people worldwide would grab from their homes in case of a fire. The objects are arranged and photographed, creating surprisingly intimate portraits.

The loveliest are poetic mixes of antique keys and beloved books. But a shockingly huge amount of people included their Mac laptops, passports and pets. Other quirkier items include an antique British maritime crest, a volcanic rock from Mt. Kilimanjaro and a "coconut broke with my head." One practical guy included a cast-iron skillet (presumably to cook food?) and a bottle of musk (to disguise body odor)—apparently confusing running out of a burning house with running out of burning house into a survivalist world without showers or restaurants.
 
Kids, of course, understand what's really crucial. Six-year old Brody grabbed his Garfield cup, his Lego helicopter, a bumblebee Transformer and a yellow belt (via FlavorPill.com).