0:11One of my earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of my relatives and not being able to. And I was just a little kid, so I didn't really understand why, but as I got older, I realized we had drug addiction in my family, including later cocaine addiction.0:24I'd been thinking about it a lot lately, partly because it's now exactly 100 years since drugs were first banned in the United Sta..

0:11It was the middle of summer and well past closing time in the downtown Berkeley bar where my friend Polly and I worked together as bartenders. Usually at the end of our shift we had a drink -- but not that night. "I'm pregnant. Not sure what I'm going to do yet," I told Polly. Without hesitation, she replied, "I've had an abortion." Before Polly, no one had ever told me that she'd had an abo..

0:11This is my great uncle, my father's father's younger brother. His name was Joe McKenna. He was a young husband and a semi-pro basketball player and a fireman in New York City. Family history says he loved being a fireman, and so in 1938, on one of his days off, he elected to hang out at the firehouse. To make himself useful that day, he started polishing all the brass, the railings on the fi..

0:11When you're a child, anything and everything is possible. The challenge, so often, is hanging on to that as we grow up. And as a four-year-old, I had the opportunity to sail for the first time.0:26I will never forget the excitement as we closed the coast. I will never forget the feeling of adventure as I climbed on board the boat and stared into her tiny cabin for the first time. But the mos..

0:11A few years ago, my mom developed rheumatoid arthritis. Her wrists, knees and toes swelled up, causing crippling, chronic pain. She had to file for disability. She stopped attending our local mosque. Some mornings it was too painful for her to brush her teeth. I wanted to help. But I didn't know how. I'm not a doctor.0:42So, what I am is a historian of medicine. So I started to research the ..

0:11Every group of female friends has the funny one, the one you go to when you need a good cry, the one who tells you to suck it up when you've had a hard day. And this group was no different. Except that this was a community of groundbreaking women who came together -- first to become teammates, then friends, and then family -- in the least likely of places: on the Special Operations battlefie..