Sublime

Edgar Winter—almost without question—is the most successful albino “keytar” enthusiast of the late 20th century. He had a lot to be happy about. “Slow Ride” opens

After his short-lived foray into the world of magic, Walter Irving Scott vanished. His legend, however, lived on. His otherworldly abilities, and the lore associated with his demonstrations, continued to steal the hearts of card junkies and move monkeys for decades to come.

Studies show that people who see mental illness as biological or genetic are less likely to blame mental conditions on weak character or to respond in punitive ways, but they are more likely to see a person’s illness as out of her control, alienating, and dangerous.

In any art form, people have been equally fascinated not only with the skill of a practitioner but also the lifestyle embodied by the artist. For me, great writers come to mind: Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac, Joan Didion, James Baldwin, Ernest Hemingway. People loved these authors not just for their books, but for the way in which

(Sasha Shulgin, who died in 2014, was a brilliant chemist who held a DEA license allowing him to synthesize novel psychedelic compounds, which he did in prodigious numbers. He also was the first to synthesize MDMA since it had been patented by Merck in 1912 and forgotten. Recognizing its psychoactive properties, he introduced the so-called empathog