On Wednesday, The New York Times peeled back yet another layer of the mouldy onion that is disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The paper examined Epstein’s attempts to cultivate relationships with scientific thought leaders, often wooing them with the prospect of funding research.
But as the Times reported, Epstein’s true intentions often lay elsewhere. Here’s a small sample of the findings:
Epstein wanted to inseminate dozens of women at his New Mexico ranch to strengthen the gene pool.
Multiple sources told the Times that Epstein, on several occasions, mentioned he wanted to use his 33,000-square-foot ranch in New Mexico as a base “to have 20 women at a time impregnated” so he could spread his DNA.
His understanding of science could be tenuous.
Epstein reportedly financed efforts “to identify a mysterious particle that might trigger the feeling that someone is watching you” and theorised “that atoms behaved like investors in a marketplace.”
Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, described Epstein as an “intellectual imposter” and recalled having once irked him by correcting a misconception he had about overpopulation (Epstein reportedly suggested we should do less to help the poor). Pinker was no longer invited to Epstein’s gatherings after that.
Despite that, he succeeded in attracting some pretty big names.
Epstein hosted dinner parties and conferences at his various properties, where he brought in big-time science luminaries. Some of those mentioned by the Times include:
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who discovered the quark; the theoretical physicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking; the palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould; Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and best-selling author; George M. Church, a molecular engineer who has worked to identify genes that could be altered to create superior humans; and the M.I.T. theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek, a Nobel laureate.
And he wanted to cryogenically freeze his penis, because of course.
One source told the Times that Epstein was interested in cryonic preservation, a process by which bodies are frozen so they could, theoretically, be brought back to life at some point in the future.
Epstein reportedly said he wanted to have his head and penis frozen.