Sitdown Sunday: The untold story of how Jeffrey Epstein became so rich

IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.

We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.

1. How did Jeffrey Epstein get so rich?

A team of New York Times reporters have interviewed dozens of Jeffrey Epstein’s colleagues and friends to find out more about the disgraced financiers’ rise to wealth. What they found is a life built on lies, scams and luck.

(The New York Times, approx 50 minutes reading time)

“He summoned Epstein to his office. “You lied about your education,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” Epstein calmly replied. He had never graduated from college. Tennenbaum recalls being disarmed by the admission. Decades later, he would regard it as an example of Epstein’s ability to manipulate his marks — in this case, him.

“Why did you do it?” Tennenbaum stammered.

Without an impressive degree or two, Epstein said, “I knew nobody would give me a chance.””

2. Trauma trauma trauma

Have you been hearing a lot about trauma lately? Well, according to Katherine Rowland, it’s trending. She thinks the word has lost all meaning after being swept up in a world of diagnostic claims and self-labeling pushed by social media and self-help books.

(The Guardian, approx 11 minutes reading time)

“Trauma, which once invoked a shattering incident, is now found in the unavoidable abrasions of ordinary life. It is implicated in procrastination, occupational malaise, and listless attachments. It is the reason we are “bad at relationships”; it is why we nap too much; it is the antecedent to our compulsive binging of Friends.

As a result, trauma has been rendered meaningless. Or as psychiatrist Arash Javanbakht told me: “When everything is trauma, nothing is.”

3. The Jim Gavin review

The Journal’s political correspondent Christina Finn analysed last week’s Fianna Fáil review into the Jim Gavin campaign, and the marathon parliamentary party meeting that followed it.

(The Journal, approx four minutes reading time)

“Tense is how some in the room described the meeting which went on for well over four hours. One TD said Martin only got defensive once, stating that overall, they thought the party leader handled it well overall.

However, another took a different view, stating that there were plenty of “lickarses” at the meeting last night, telling Martin how amazing he was.

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There are clear divisions on view within the party. While there has always been pro-Micheál/anti-Micheál groups, it appears this whole debacle has only entrenched the views of the two camps.”

4. What Susie said

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles gave a jawdropping interview to Vanity Fair this week where she described US President Donald Trump as having an “alcoholic’s personality”. The two-part article series included over a dozen interviews with Wiles where she discussed a variety of issues which have come up in the eleven months since Trump took power, including the Epstein Files, Elon Musk’s roles in government and tariffs.

(Vanity Fair, approx 27 minute reading time)

“We often spoke on Sundays after church. Wiles, an Episcopalian, calls herself “Catholic lite.” One time we spoke while she was doing her laundry in her Washington, DC, rental. Trump, she told me, “has an alcoholic’s personality.” Vance’s conversion from Never Trumper to MAGA acolyte, she said, has been “sort of political.” The vice president, she added, has been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.” Russell Vought, architect of the notorious Project 2025 and head of the Office of Management and Budget, is “a right-wing absolute zealot.” When I asked her what she thought of Musk reposting a tweet about public sector workers killing millions under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, she replied: “I think that’s when he’s microdosing.” (She says she doesn’t have first-hand knowledge.)”

5. The cholera epidemic that hit after US aid cuts

As touched on by Susie Wiles in her controversial Vanity Fair article. Under Trump’s leadership, the US Agency for International Development was dismantled, cutting international aid this year. South Sudan was one of the places impacted by funding cuts. What followed is the worst cholera epidemic in the country’s history.

(ProPublica, approx 25 minutes reading time)

“On a remote patch of land in South Sudan, a 38-year-old man named Tor Top gathered with his neighbors outside the local health clinic. Surrounded by floodwaters, their hamlet of thatch and mud homes had been battling a massive outbreak of cholera, a deadly disease spread by poor sanitation. Around the country, it had infected 36,000 people in three months, killing more than 600, many of them babies. Top’s family lived in the epicenter.

The clinic, one of 12 in the area run by the Christian, Maryland-based humanitarian organization World Relief and funded by USAID, provided a key weapon in the fight: IV bags to stave off dehydration and death. The bags cost just 62 cents each, and in three months, the clinics had helped save more than 500 people.

Now, Top, who lived with his wife, children and mother in a one-room house less than 50 feet from the clinic, listened as World Relief staff shared grim news: The Trump administration had stopped USAID’s funding to World Relief. Their clinic, their lifeline, was closing.”

6. Old school taxis

In a world of car-hailing apps, drivers of traditional black cabs must be able to navigate the city without GPS help. One London black-cab driver spent five years studying thousands of streets in London before he achieved his dream and was awarded a license to be a London cabbie.

(The New York Times, approx 15 minutes reading time)

“Besart Bilalli scanned the road through the windshield on a sunny Friday, thinking hard about his next turn. We were crawling down a busy London road in the upscale Knightsbridge neighborhood as drivers and cyclists shot past, their phones hoisted up on dashboards or handlebars.

Mr. Bilalli’s phone lay idle next to him, the GPS switched off. In this city, navigating the streets without technological help is essential to becoming a cabdriver. And for Mr. Bilalli, a key to his family’s future.”

…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…

7. The fall of Roe v Wade

Released last year, this year-long chronicle of a family struggling to survive is a tough, but important, read. It follows the story of how Mayron Hollis faced a life-threatening pregnancy under Tennessee’s abortion ban, and how her family lived in the year after their daughter was born.

(ProPublica, approx 20 minutes reading time)

“The same state that questioned Mayron’s fitness to care for her four children forced her to continue a pregnancy that risked her life to have a fifth, one that would require more intensive care than any of the others.

Tennessee already had some of the worst outcomes in the nation when measuring maternal health, infant mortality and child poverty. Lawmakers who paved the way for a new generation of post-Roe births did little to bolster the state’s meager safety net to support these babies and their families.”

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