I attended a great event featuring author Neal Stephenson and organized by Anderson’s Book Shop, and I wanted to share some highlights for those of you who might be interested (I used to be a reporter and took some handwritten notes during the talk). The November 21, 2021 event began…

SPOILER WARNING DO NOT READ THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE FINISHED WATCHING SQUID GAME What does Player 456 do next? We viewers will have to wait a long time before we get to know the official answer, but I have some thoughts on this, based on my experience as a lawyer…

I appreciate all the attention in recent months to violence against Asian Americans. And I appreciate the annual, official recognition of May as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. But I also think we can do better. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (Asian/Pacific Americans for short) now represent more than 5 percent…

Using Data and Documents More Effectively in Investigations Imagine that you are an investigator and have access to an insider whose credibility could not be impeached and that this insider could lay out exactly what the defendant did with the money or told his victims. You would spend days with…

The case of Farid Fata has gotten a lot of new attention recently with season 2 of the popular Dr. Death podcast, and it is a useful example of what data can reveal about health care fraud. Data probably could have caught Fata even earlier, and data helps suggest an…

Apple’s Home Before Dark is a great TV series but it is dark. Very dark. Over the course of the first season, law-enforcement officials commit crimes and ethical violations, and those actions come to light only because of a 9-year-old reporter who breaks the law herself. Yeesh. I used to…

In 1854, the California Supreme Court prohibited all non-white people from testifying against white people, freeing a white man who had been convicted for killing a Chinese man in front of multiple witnesses. I learned about this case many years ago in law school, and my classmates were understandably shocked…

You may have heard me tell part of this story before. On March 1, 2013, This American Life aired the episode “No Coincidence, No Story!” I was featured in the episode — I was the guy who discovered two weeks after getting engaged that his father had almost married his…