We found Jeffrey Epstein's other little black book, which revealed hundreds of new connections to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender
Hello!
Welcome to this weekly roundup of stories from Insider's Business co-Editor in Chief Matt Turner. Subscribe here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Sunday.
What we're going over today:
- We found Jeffrey Epstein's little black book from 1997, and discovered new connections to the convicted sex offender.
- Joe Rogan is sparking outrage inside Spotify with his controversial show.
- A secret club helps prepare young CEOs to take over the world.
- America is in the middle of The Great Reshuffle.
What's trending this morning:
- Amazon Care is approaching big health insurers to get coverage. But it's struggling to get some of them on board.
- VC firm DCM beats its top competitors by generating 30x fund returns. Its secret: Not drinking the Silicon Valley "Kool-Aid."
- Wall Street is buying and building entire neighborhoods. And getting rich in the process.
- Where is Trump's White House staff now? We created a searchable database of more than 327 top staffers to show where they all landed.
- New York's top brokers swear by their 7 a.m. to midnight schedules. Oren and Tal Alexander have sold nearly $1 billion worth of real estate this year -and share their routines with us.
Inside Jeffrey Epstein's little black book
Insider has obtained a never-before-seen address book that appears to have belonged to Jeffrey Epstein in the '90s, connecting him to a new network of prominent financiers and political figures:
The Epstein book came to light through a circuitous and unusual path: A self-described "enigmatic rock chick" living in Manhattan's East Village found it on the sidewalk in the late 1990s.
Denise Ondayko, a former musician who now lives in the Bay Area, said she was walking down Fifth Avenue when she spotted a black address book on the ground. Flipping through, she found addresses and phone numbers for members of the Trump and Kennedy clans, and iconic chroniclers of wealth such as Robin Leach. She decided to hold onto it, slipped it into a box, and forgot about it.
In May 2020, Ondayko and a relative were cleaning out an old storage unit she had rented in Michigan when the long-buried book emerged from a box of odds and ends. Thumbing through it - and seeing the dozens of entries for Epstein's myriad properties - the relative immediately recognized who the owner was.
Here's what we discovered in Epstein's book:
Also read:
Spotify employees are frustrated with Joe Rogan and his show
Rogan, who has a $100 million licensing deal with Spotify, is one of the most powerful figures in media, and one of the most controversial. On his show, he's aired COVID-19 misinformation, laughed as a guest described sexual harassment, and hosted a prolific conspiracy theorist three times.
Spotify, which owns the exclusive rights to stream "The Joe Rogan Experience," has stood by him, despite removing a few dozen episodes from his archive. But some of the company's employees have been irritated by Spotify's largely hands-off approach and have pushed leadership to rein Rogan in. Spotify hasn't budged.
See what employees are saying:
Also read:
- Megyn Kelly on switching from NBC to SiriusXM and why she'd rather interview Donald Trump Jr. over Donald Trump
- People are fleeing the ad industry and it's leaving agencies struggling to fill hundreds of open roles
America is experiencing "The Great Reshuffle"
Millions of Americans are voluntarily leaving their jobs for better ones at a speed we haven't seen since the turn of the millennium:
In the 25 years that Dawn Fay has been in the recruiting business, she's seen a hot job market several times. But nothing, she says, comes close to the frenzy she's seeing right now, as the economy begins to boom in the wake of the pandemic. "There is so much movement in the market," Fay, a senior district president at the staffing firm Robert Half, said. "The churn is amazing to see."
"Churn" may be something of an understatement: It's downright chaos at HR departments across the US. So many Americans have quit their jobs this spring that the resignation rate has skyrocketed to a two-decade high. And people aren't just looking to switch employers - some are jumping into new professions altogether, while others are climbing the ladder at their current workplace.
The result is an economy-wide game of musical chairs - a wholesale transformation of the job market that has left employers scrambling to retain employees and attract new ones. Call it The Great Reshuffle.
Here's what that means for the American economy:
Also read:
- HR professionals are being recruited relentlessly and have their pick of top jobs
- Americans don't take nearly enough vacation days - and experts say it's because companies think about PTO all wrong
This secret club helps prepare young CEOs to take over the world
Founded in 1950, YPO has a reputation as a fraternity for ultra-rich white men who inherited their family's business, and, for a time, it was.
But over the years, it has recruited more entrepreneurs, who tell Insider that the exclusive club is worth the price of admission: a $7,950 upfront fee and chapter dues ranging from $2,000 to $7,000 annually. Plus, the club's secrecy doesn't hurt.
Confidentiality is required by a code of conduct, and members say that clandestine atmosphere is part of the appeal. Executives can unload about work or their personal lives, trusting that nothing will slip out. In fact, the group's code of conduct has an often-repeated line - "Nothing, Nobody, Never" - that serves as an unofficial slogan.
Take a look at the organization that boasts 30,000 members worldwide:
Also read:
- How to become a top diversity executive and lead change in corporate America
- Carol Tomé was hired to whip UPS into shape, but some insiders worry she's killing what made the company great in the first place
Finally, here are some headlines you might have missed last week.
- Matt
- I rage-quit my job of 6 years when a new employee was promoted over me. I don't regret leaving in such an emotional way, but there are a few things I should've done differently.
- 20 sought-after female political strategists to watch as more women in the US enter politics
- Andy Jassy's first email to employees as Amazon CEO is a master class in memo-writing
- How to mine doge: An 18-year-old TikTok influencer shares his process for earning crypto
- Junior bankers lament 'Goldman discount' as other firms raise pay and analysts who complained about 100-hour work-weeks get nothing
- A crypto evangelist shares 5 altcoins that could explode in value, including one with 100-times potential