Large N, Supersymmetry ... and QCD

This paper consists of two (still only vaguely) related parts: in the first, we briefly review work done in the past three years on the ``planar equivalence" between a class of non-supersymmetric theories (including limiting cases of QCD) and their corresponding supersymmetric "parents"; in the second, we present details of a new formulation of planar quantum mechanics and illustrate its effectiveness in an intriguing supersymmetric example.