Part one of a planned nine-part serialized biography of Harrison Gray Otis, the “inventor of modern Los Angeles.”

Future installments will include Otis’s interlude as “emperor of the Pribilofs,” his military atrocities in the Philippines, his bitter legal battles with the Theosophists, the Otis-Chandler empire in the Mexicali Valley, the Times bombing in 1910, the notorious discovery of fellatio in Long Beach, and Otis’s quixotic plan for world government.

On affirmative action at the University of Texas, the essence of privilege, and getting what you deserve.

This job—writing college essays for Abigail Fishers—was the only job I have ever been truly ashamed of, and I am so ashamed of it now that it hurts.

People who are short on relatives can hire a husband, a mother, a grandson. The resulting relationships can be more real than you’d expect.

But there’s one way that NFTs are profoundly different from the last generation of online disrupters. In terms of ownership, they actually move in the opposite direction of projects like Napster, BitTorrent and the software communities that destabilized the entertainment industry. Those were about reproducing data and sharing it for free, or eventually, a subscription fee. NFTs are about taking what should be a fully shareable image and sticking a SOLD sign on it.

“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

In northern Nigeria, radical Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram is facing a vigilante backlash from armed teenagers with nothing to lose.

Courtland Kelley knew there was a problem more than a decade ago. He tried to speak up. He sued. He lost.

How the Pentagon makes “Koch Industries look like an organic farm” when it comes to toxic water contamination.

How to understand the real-world value of things that are worth nothing and everything at once.

How the self-proclaimed “inventor of all things streaming” went from dot-com millionaire to crime ring accomplice.

On the 1,600-year-old text that suggests that Jesus, long believed to be celibate, was a married man.

A 21-year-old UCLA math major leaves his $9,000-a-month internship to fight with the rebels in Libya.

How a Tulsa preacher used direct mail to create the American religious right.

A week in the author’s life when it became impossible to control the course of events.

A nationally respected neurologist feeds secrets to Wall Street.

On Lucille Miller, who in San Bernadino in 1964 was convicted of burning her husband to death in his Volkswagen.

The author visits Franklin County, Mississippi, where, according to census data, there are zero same-sex couples.

Shulamith Firestone, one of the first radical feminists, helped to create a new society. But she couldn’t live in it.

On “Operation Bambi,” the secret plan to oust “Today” show co-host Ann Curry.

In 2011, just before Christmas, a tiny Spanish town won 120 million Euros in the lottery. A trip to the new Sodeto.

In a Turkish hotel, veterans of the Libyan Revolution meet with their fractured Syrian counterparts to transfer know-how and heavy weaponry.

Women who left their careers to be stay-at-home mothers reflect on the decision ten years later.

What did soccer have to do with two brutal murders after a pickup game?

The journey from a Sudanese refugee camp to an Atlanta police academy.