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A look back at how filmmakers handled the Vietnam War, and how they worked with the military—or ignored their recommendations—to get them made: “In coming to the Pentagon with his plans in May, 1975, Coppola told Public Affairs officials that his initial script would need considerable work, especially the end, which he considered ‘surrealistic.’ While […]

Following the massive success of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling has written a novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy: “Rowling told me, ‘Very recently, I met a girl in a shop. She was in her early twenties, and she came up to me and said, “May I hug you?” And I said yes, and we hugged. […]

Rethinking schizophrenia as a brain disorder that requires medication, and recognizing that part of the cure is looking at the social factors that cause mental breakdowns: “By the time I met her, Susan was a success story. She was a student at the local community college. She had her own apartment, and she kept it […]

How Lisette Lee, a privileged young woman with ties to the Samsung fortune, turned to drug trafficking: “Lee would go on to tell federal authorities a lot of things about herself: that she was a famous Korean pop star as well as the heiress to the Samsung electronics fortune; she was so emphatic on this […]

An inquiry into a neighbor’s suicide leads a man to discover links between heavy marijuana use and psychosis among people who suffer from mental illnesses: “One afternoon recently, I met Dr. Roger Roffman, professor emeritus at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, in his office up on Roosevelt Way. He has a calm […]

In the first four years as the first black president, Obama has largely avoided addressing race directly. Some historical context: “Thus the myth of ‘twice as good’ that makes Barack Obama possible also smothers him. It holds that African Americans—­enslaved, tortured, raped, discriminated against, and subjected to the most lethal homegrown terrorist movement in American […]

The actor reflects on his career choices, the films he passed on, and his early days working for Mister Rogers: “Michael: What people don’t realize is what his crew looked like — they almost all had hair down to their lower backs, one guy just dripped with patchouli and marijuana smoke, worse than Tom Petty. […]

[Not single-page] John Friend created a yoga empire with Anusara, which grew to 600,000 students and made him one of the most popular yoga teachers in the United States. It all unraveled following a scandal involving sex with students and financial mismanagement: “Sex with employees and marijuana in the mail is garden-variety stuff, hardly scandalous […]

California is not just deciding whether pot should be legal. It’s determining the shape of a major new American industry.

Mendocino County, Famously Laid Back, Reconsiders Its Stance on Marijuana