She's written about Jimi Hendrix, Toni Morrison and Dave Chappelle, but essayist and critic Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah says she's more interested in the moments that these legends have been true to themselves. Ghansah offers her Brief but Spectacular take on fearlessness and black art.

Jad Abumrad says he grew up in a kind of in-between space, as an Arab kid in Nashville.

Journalist and author A.J. Jacobs has been called a "human guinea pig," a title he earned.

When photographer Ken Van Sickle was 23 and living in Paris, he could barely afford rolls of film. One night, hearing that jazz great Chet Baker was playing, he went and took only two pictures, and one was blurry. So what's happened to photography now that everyone has the technology to take as many pictures as they like? Van Sickle offers his Brief But Spectacular take.