OZY Daily Dose

Back in 1956, there was a hairdresser named Leila Cohoon from Independence, Missouri. Before we go any further, you should know the proper pronunciation: Lee-eye-luh, from Missour-uh. Now that that's out of the way, you should also understand that the young hairdresser set off on a spring day that year with the intention of buying a pair of Easter shoes. But then she spotted a hair wreath in a storefront window at the Country Club Plaza. It was like lightning hit.

I knew it was a sketchy neighborhood. There were always a few men milling around on the streets, looking me up and down, making me feel like an especially tasty piece of barbecue. A friend of mine drove in from the suburbs of Chicago once and had his car stolen just minutes after arriving at my boyfriend's place. He calmly remarked as he stood by the window: "There goes my car."But I didn't feel scared.I was in the historic South Shore neighborhood, just a few blocks from Lake Michigan.

If I started out a story with "three Asian and two Black women walk into a bar ..." you might be right in feeling like you needed to prepare yourself for a punchline.It's a joke, right? Yeah, except in this case it's not. Let me give you some background, a scene-setter: It was the '90s, the five of us were six-days-a-week lesbian clubgoers. We wanted to dance, be with our peeps, be free and safe and to feel unity with our own kind.

If I started out a story with "three Asian and two Black women walk into a bar ..." you might be right in feeling like you needed to prepare yourself for a punchline.It's a joke, right? Yeah, except in this case it's not. Let me give you some background, a scene-setter: It was the '90s, the five of us were six-days-a-week lesbian clubgoers. We wanted to dance, be with our peeps, be free and safe and to feel unity with our own kind.

“Once again it’s my huge pleasure to welcome our many listeners … and to welcome four talented performers who are going to show their skill with words and language as they try to speak about a subject that I’ve given them — and they try to do that without hesitation, repetition or deviation.

You're running on the treadmill when the trainer tells you that you need to speed up further. As you're cooling down after your workout, the trainer designs your routine for the next day. You did well, it tells you. Yes, you read that right. The trainer isn't a human. It's an artificial intelligence-driven platform that gleans what your body needs and what it's capable of, and then designs your workouts and oversees your routines, even offering motivation when you need it.

Superstars become superstars because they never let nature go it alone. To their natural ability, they add layers and layers of nurture, which are less shimmering but still profitable to the ambitious baller, like University of Louisville guard Asia Durr.Durr, 21, had the given athleticism of hands, feet, agility and size. It was seasoned with cement court backyard brawls with an older brother, and with her mom trying to rattle her as Durr toed the free-throw line on the home court.

When superstar Irish chef Darina Allen gives people Mertensia maritima for the first time, she likes it to be simple. Sometimes even just a leaf on its own, a little garnish. That’s the best way to taste it, after all — and to marvel at it. Anytime a food can fool us, it feels like magic. That’s the trick behind molecular gastronomy, constructing what looks like a poached egg from a yolk, parmesan cheese, water and chemicals.

When news hit of the measles outbreak in the Orthodox Jewish community in New York, I was shocked and appalled. And I felt a little bit to blame.In 2013, as a junior in college, I was working as a teacher and an extra, going to set between classes, capitalizing on my Semitic facial features and access to Hasidic wardrobe items. One day, I responded to an ad looking for actors to play Hasidic men.

Fifty years ago, on March 8, 1969, 10,600 people filed into the University of Georgia’s Stegeman Coliseum. Why the excitement? LSU basketball star “Pistol Pete” Maravich was in town. Maravich scored 58 points that night and was mobbed by adoring fans. His career college scoring average was more than 44 per game. The game at Georgia defines an era embodied by Maravich and contemporaries Calvin Murphy of Niagara University and Rick Mount of Purdue.