How Frank and Jamie McCourt bought the Dodgers for “for less than the price of an oceanfront home in Southampton” and eventually became entangled in one of the most expensive divorces in California history, which laid bare their finances and confirmed what many already knew: they had bankrupted one of the most storied franchises in baseball.

In all, the McCourts reportedly took $108 million out of the team in personal distributions over five years—a sum that Molly Knight, a reporter with ESPN who has extensively covered the story, notes is eerily similar to the cash payment that she says Frank McCourt has claimed he made for the team.

A profile of Ken Robinson, who earned minor fame and more than a few enemies for the controversial way he “bought” his house:

The week after Robinson moved into the tan-sided home with a faux stone entrance and maroon shutters, he was soaring, an Internet hero a few levels shy of Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who last summer cracked a beer and left work on a plane's emergency slide. For $16, Robinson had filed paperwork with Denton County staking his claim to the abandoned home through an obscure Texas law called adverse possession. Ever since, curious visitors, beginner real estate investors and people who want an ultra-cheap home to fulfill their version of the American Dream have been knocking on his door for advice and a handshake.

“This is a story about an entertainer named R. Kelly. It is a story about the remarkable, but also very strange, pop talent he has. It is a story about the difficult places he came from and the ways they may, or may not, have shaped who he has become. It is also the story of a man who has been publicly accused of multiple sexual offenses with underage women, and who stood trial for making child pornography. He was eventually acquitted of that charge, and his career has continued uninterrupted, but for the most part he has evaded even the most basic questions that might help people understand what is true about him. For this story, R. Kelly agreed to speak about his whole life without restrictions.”

Assessing 40 years of treatment.

My abiding faith in the possibility of self-transformation propelled me from one therapist to the next, ever on the lookout for something that seemed tormentingly out of reach, some scenario that would allow me to live more comfortably in my own skin. For all my doubts about specific tenets and individual psychoanalysts, I believed in the surpassing value of insight and the curative potential of treatment — and that may have been the problem to begin with.

"I thought dying for your country was the worst thing that could happen to you, and I don't think it is. I think killing for your country can be a lot worse. Because that's the memory that haunts."

On February 25, 1969, Bob Kerrey led a raid into a Vietnamese peasant hamlet during which at least 13 unarmed women and children were killed.

"Some in Nice knew the man as one of the many playboy predators the city seems to beget—black hair slicked back off a shining brow, dress shoes tapering to varnished points, a dark shirt unbuttoned low to reveal the pectorals into which he had obsessively, unblushingly, invested himself. He was 31 but preferred older women, both for their erotic openness and, it seems clear, for their money. Those who knew him best knew him to be a cold and brutal man, detached, amused by little save rough sex and gore."

A series of one-sided international love letters.

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On the Becket Fund, a little-known firm that has become the leading force in the fight for corporations seeking a religious exemption from covering employees’ birth control.

A sociologist learns techniques for evading the authorities.

CeCe McDonald, a homeless trans teen in Minneapolis, was charged with murder for defending herself. Then she became a folk hero.

“After listening to him since I was a kid and seeing him live for—gulp—nearly 40 years, I think I’m beginning to figure it out.”

Two truckers talk on a wintry Alaskan highway.

In 1981, Mauritania became the last country on Earth to abolish slavery. The law had little effect; at least 140,000 people are still enslaved today. Their best hope for freedom is an abolitoinist named Biram Dah Abeid.

A woman travels with a band on the way to their next show.

“You are reading this because you have no idea what NASA is doing. And NASA, tongue-tied by jargon, can’t figure out how to tell you. But the agency is engaged in work that can be more enduring and far-reaching than anything else this country is paying for.”

Relief pitcher Donnie Moore is best known for giving up a crucial home run during Game 5 the 1986 ALCS. It’s not what led to his suicide a few years later.

Cemetery field recordings reveal terrifying messages.

Kelli Stapleton, whose teenage daughter was autistic and prone to violent rages, had come to fear for her life. So she made a decision that perhaps only she could justify.

Migos, a young Atlanta rap trio, has decamped to a mansion outside of town to avoid trouble, ride Go-Karts, shop for $2300 backpacks, and continue their streak of red-hot singles.

Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, who left Pro-Choice activism for born-again Christianity and a strange life of financial opportunism, died this week.

Catch shares are touted by the government and environmental groups as the solution to overfishing. But for a new generation under the system, the economics consist mainly of “absentee landlords, brokers and bankers, [and] fish quota that costs more than your house.”

The author participates in the Society for Creative Anachronism’s “Crown Lyst, the twice-yearly event when knights will battle with ancient weapons and the victor will be named the new king.”