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.

The J train is usually fairly empty toward my stop. It's that close to the end of the line. It's also the middle of the night. There are four other passengers in the subway car. They're all sideways.Nope, I'm sideways.I must have knocked out hard. I'm lying on my arms and ribs. My legs stick out over the edge of the bench, bending the wrong way at my knees. I remember one time I'd nodded off and fallen out of a subway seat.

Because this authentic BBQ joint is the place to go in the barbecue capital of Texas. The smoke stings your eyes as you walk into the hallway, the walls black with a century of burnt oak. There’s a gap in the line as you queue up at the meat counter, to avoid the slow-burning fire at the end of the 12-foot brick smokehouse. Contained within: mounds of brisket, sausage, turkey and pork ribs. A sign advises “No Forks,” but they will give you a plastic knife. No plates, either.

Five people in a newsroom in Maryland are dead. Shotgunned to death at work by a lone gunman who walked through the long-running Capital Gazette daily newspaper in Annapolis, looking for victims and finding them. He, himself, was eventually found hiding under a desk, his discarded gun across the room. No known motive, no ID, no warning.

Families, sadly, are separated every day. They have been; they will be. For a wide variety of reasons, very few of them good. But for this moment in time, we're both noting and noticing that while the faces change, the unpleasantness remains the same.

We spend a third of our lives doing it, so how much should doctors study it? Go ahead and ask medical students how much time they spend in the classroom learning about sleep — wait, that’s a bad idea. They’re busy cramming for an exam and they’re exhausted. Whoa, look at that one’s eyes. But hypothetically, say you were to nudge awake some slumbering soon-to-be white coats in the library and ask that question.

Some of the greatest athletes in history never got the attention or acclaim they deserved. In this series, The Unsung, OZY looks at some of the most talented sports figures in history who were underappreciated, overshadowed or forgotten.An athlete who is not just great but truly dominant is a rare thing.

Look. This will only take you seven minutes. OK? It was a standard-issue, beat cop .38 magnum. I placed the muzzle beside my temple. I am 35 and have a 29-inch waist. The month is January. It's 3 a.m. I've been drinking. But go back. My mother and I cleaned out my grandfather's house not long after he died. We'd already sold most of the furniture and tools. What remained were the leftovers. Like the five Playboy magazines stacked neatly in the top corner of the bedroom closet.

Eddie Huang is just 36 years old, but his already impressive résumé reads like an all-you-can-eat professional buffet. Huang is a celebrity chef, restaurateur, best-selling author, television producer and fashion designer. And this week the entrepreneur finds himself wearing yet another hat: He’s the subject of Breaking Big, a new TV series from OZY airing tonight on PBS at 8.30 p.m. ET that charts the unexpected twists and turns of rising stars like Huang on their paths to fame.