OZY Daily Dose

Halftime of the Detroit Pistons and New Orleans Pelicans game at UNLV’s Cox Pavilion is winding down, but no one seems particularly interested in the game’s competitors. Kids race through the stands to collect autographs from Charlotte Hornets forward Frank Kaminsky, while scouts, team executives and media members trade gossip. On the court, Pistons superstars Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond are in street clothes, heaving up half-court shots like a couple of kids at the rec center.

As soon as I step into the restaurant, I'm greeted by the sound of flushing water rippling down the ceiling. The waitress points to a scattering of toilet seats (lids down) and asks me where I'd like to sit. Next to the bathroom, please. I don't want to waste this opportunity to experience all that the Modern Toilet Restaurant in Taiwan has to offer. Img 8658Source: Leslie Nguyen-OkwuThe turd sub sandwich lives up to its description.

The year that Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr., the American actor, rapper and poet better known by his stage name Common, was born was the same year that his father, Lonnie Sr., was hitting rock bottom. The elder Lynn’s dreams of becoming a pro basketball player had never materialized, and the 29-year-old had spiraled into a fog of drug addiction and alcohol abuse.

The Atlanta Braves used the 14th overall pick in the 2015 Major League Baseball draft on Kolby Allard mostly because he was a left-handed pitcher who could throw 95 miles per hour. It was all a disguise, a wig and fake mustache. Today, Allard has ditched the costume and revealed himself as a pitcher, not a hairy-chested behemoth trying to chuck a baseball through a brick wall.

A common cold ends up being not so common, and you’re plunged into the twilight of something that steals your mind. In the fall of 2015, I moved across the country to go to university in New York City. I loved my new roommates, my new city, my new life. I’d been happy before, but there was always something off. As I started orientation, for the first time, everything seemed to fall into place. Less than a week in, I caught a cold from my roommate. It rapidly got worse.

She was a good girl. I was a bad dude. Her family had money. Mine didn't. And, unsurprisingly, her family hated me.We started dating when she was 15 and I was 17. We were high school sweethearts and I, really, owe her my life. Literally. She was with me when I was accidentally shot in the face at 18 by a buddy planning a robbery with my gun. She was with me when I went to prison and over, under and through numerous arrests, fights and angry, confused young-man insanity.

Cycling across Africa wasn’t supposed to be easy, but it also wasn’t supposed to involve angry elephants. In 2011, I left my job as CEO of a media development company to race across Africa on a bicycle. Sixty-three of us lined up at the foot of the pyramids in Cairo at dawn on Jan. 6 for the 8,000-mile ride to Cape Town in the world’s longest bike race, the Tour d’Afrique.

OZY's new TV show, Breaking Big, explores the secrets to success. OZY's new TV show, Breaking Big, explores the secrets to success. Click to find out more. OZY Media’s third prime-time television show, Breaking Big, airs Fridays at 8.30 p.m. ET on PBS stations, OZY.com and Facebook Watch. Join us as we explore the unexpected journeys to success of some of the world’s most influential stars.

Hold the judgment, but I dined out 12 times during a recent four-day trip to Memphis, home of Elvis, B.B. King and Kathy Bates. Bluff City is famous for blues and Beale Street, but nowhere is its soul more apparent than in its grub. Most cities do a few things right, and for Memphis one of those things is barbecue.One of the best places? Payne's BBQ.

The morning was crisp. Icicles hung from drainpipes like daggers. The city was occupied by fear - the evening before, for the first time during the war, it had been bombed. Despite that, my mother insisted nothing must stop me from going to school. It was Feb. 1, 1987, and I was 280 miles northwest of Tehran, in Mianeh.The gate to the elementary school was on the main street.