OZY Daily Dose

Barefoot and shivering, I watched from the sidewalk as flames pushed out the basement windows of the three-story wooden tenement, then up along the siding and toward the roof with speed.It was the middle of the night. There were neighbors out watching the fire. A frat boy who lived next door saw my bare feet and brought out a pair of boat shoes. I thanked him and put them on my feet. Fire trucks arrived and doused the flames, by then consuming the whole building.

From an ornate drinks room overlooking the River Shannon, spirits expert Cathal Quinn is in full flow telling the story of the drinks craze gripping Ireland. "They say you eat with your eyes," he declares, carefully filling a large goblet with ice, deliciously scented Mediterranean tonic, raspberries and a strong measure of gin. My mouth is watering, and I've never tasted gin before. "But you drink with your eyes too.

On a weekday evening at 1000 & 1 Signes, a Moroccan café on the Rue de Charonne in Paris, France, every walk-in follows the same pattern. They enter, in pairs or small groups, ask for a table and take a step back when they realize the waiter can't hear them.

In early 2018, Ontario wine researcher Debbie Inglis sat down to take a much-needed sip of merlot to celebrate the $960,000 grant she'd been awarded to build the augmented and virtual reality (VR) consumer research lab at Brock University. With a VR headset on, she raised the glass to her lips. Crack. She tried again. Nope. "The glass would hit the bridge of the goggles," she says.

It was over in an instant - not with the snap of a finger, but that of a fibula. Washington Redskins running back Chris Thompson opened a lane for quarterback Kirk Cousins, with Saints defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins in pursuit. A lunge, as Rankins tried to bring Cousins down. A step, as Thompson tried to block him. And a snap, as Rankins' 287 pounds broke Thompson's leg.The injury ended Thompson's 2017 season.

I was teaching fourth grade in Iraq, and in 2017 Iraqi Kurdistan was voting on its independence from federal Iraq. I wanted to be there to see what it was like to live in a country that was voting itself into existence. Countries, we sometimes believe, are monolithic and unchanging, when it's quite the opposite. Since 1990, 34 new countries have appeared on the map, rendering whole inventories of globes utterly useless.I started looking for a job in Erbil, the capital of Iraq's Kurdish region.

There’s a show or event for just about everyone. Anarchist or not. Rolling up to the Trumbullplex, Detroit’s self-titled “Sexiest Anarchist Collective,” I’m seven minutes late for its weekly open mic night.

The sky blue 1965 Ford Econoline Supervan cruised into the inky murk of a 1983 Montana night as we, the band I was in, made our way across America. The mission? To play hardcore for huddled masses, specifically, the few hundred people nationwide tuned into the loud, fast mechanics of music that sounded just as pissed off as we were. The music we played and the music we listened to often exploded from a 1-2-3-4 drum-stick click into two-to-three minute paeans to all kinds of Reagan-era anomie.

On Sept. 2, in the sixth inning of a game against the Philadelphia Phillies, it took but one swing of his bat for the Chicago Cubs' do-it-all infielder Javier Báez to knock out two huge milestones on his season. His home run off Phillies ace Aaron Nola marked both his 30th homer and his 100th RBI of the season - and brought the discussions surrounding his MVP candidacy to a fever pitch.

In Game 5 of the 2015 World Series, with the Kansas City Royals leading the series 3-1 against the New York Mets, reliever Wade Davis came out of the bullpen, pitched a shutout inning and helped end the Royals’ 30-year World Series drought. In so doing, he started the current era of MLB postseason bullpen fever. The Royals were patient zero for this fever — building a power pen and winning it all in 2015 — and then the fever spread.