The Headlines - A Times Investigation Into Epstein’s Death, and Why Gas Prices Might Stay High

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Plus, a counterclockwise mystery. Here’s what we’re covering: The (Mostly) Unanswered Questions at the Heart of a U.S.-Iran Accord, by Richard Pérez-Peña High Gas Costs May Linger After U.S.-Iran Deal, by Emmett Lindner Six Takeaways From the Times Investigation Into Epstein’s Death, by Charles Homans, Steve Eder, Jan Ransom and Michael Rothfeld Newsom Says Trump’s Justice Department Is Investigating Him and His Wife, by Laurel Rosenhall, Devlin Barrett and Maggie Haberman Fox to Acquire Roku, Joining the Battle for the Living Room, by Benjamin Mullin Nearly Everyone, Everywhere, Veers Left When Walking, by Rachel Nuwer Tune in, and tell us what you think at [e-mail]. For corrections, email [e-mail]. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, June 16th. Here's what we're covering. I think there's still a lot of confusion about what exactly is in this deal. Can you lay out the terms for us? First of all, good morning, everybody. Thanks for having us.

So first of all, I think it's a great day for the American people, because what this deal does fundamentally is two things. In the day since the U.S. and Iran announced they'd agreed to a framework to end the war, the specific language of what's in the short-term truce has not yet been least, and the exact terms remain a secret. On a number of issues, we are going to have to figure this stuff out during the technical negotiation phase. The major sticking points between the two countries have been pushed off till later negotiations,

like the future of Iran's nuclear program and whether Western sanctions on Iran will be lifted. But there are also a lot of questions about how the agreement will play out in the short term, especially with the Strait of Hormuz. Both countries have said they're going to lift their blockades, but how fast the waterway gets back up to full traffic remains unclear. Trump said things will be back to normal by Friday. Other U.S. officials say it will take weeks, and the U.S. military wants to ensure there are no mines along the passage. There is also confusion around whether ships carrying oil and other

goods through the strait will have to pay. It was free before the war, but an Iranian official said his country will now assess fees on passing ships, which legal experts say could violate international law. Even once more oil tankers get going, for drivers in the U.S., it will probably take weeks to see meaningful improvement at the gas station. And there may be long-lasting effects on fuel prices given just how much oil infrastructure was damaged or destroyed during the war. Also, energy analysts have a saying about gas prices in general, up like a rocket, down like a feather. Asin they go up quick and they take their time coming down. Meanwhile, in Israel,

A scheme of this who Nassau led to the U.S. Dei A nationaer U.S. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a defiant speech yesterday, suggesting his country is not bound by the U.S. Iran framework for peace and saying Israeli forces would not withdraw from Lebanon,

where they've been fighting with the Iran-back militia Hezbollah. That could threaten the larger peace deal, as Iran has insisted that the ceasefire covers Lebanon as well. Jeffrey Epstein's death in jail in 2019 was ruled a suicide. But that hasn't stopped countless conspiracy theories. So my colleagues and I went through tens of thousands of pages of evidence, and we interviewed people who had never spoken to reporters before.

A new investigation from my colleague Steve Eder and a team of Times reporters offers the most complete look yet into the death of Jeffrey Epstein. Nearly seven years after he was found hanging from a noose in his jail cell, where he was being held on charges of sex trafficking minors, many people think Epstein was murdered by someone with an interest in keeping him quiet. In the past few months, though, the release of the Epstein files, with scores of previously confidential documents, opened up a new opportunity to dig into the circumstances of his death. And there are a few key takeaways from my colleagues reporting.

First, lots of new evidence suggests that Epstein was determined to end his life. leading up to his death he had written about and discussed the idea of suicide in documents the times got access to, saying he felt he couldn't bear life in jail. And beyond an apparent suicide attempt that had previously been reported, his cellmate told the times that he caught Epstein preparing to kill himself two other times. Another takeaway. Warnings about Epstein's risk of suicide were routinely ignored by corrections officers. In his final hours, he was left alone and unobserved, involved. violation of specific orders that had been given about his supervision, and his cell was filled with heaps of linens he wasn't supposed to have, along with multiple nooses and other strips of

fabric. And overall, the Times analysis of security and staffing at the jail, which included reviewing hundreds of hours of surveillance footage, talking to inmates and guards, and constructing a 3D computer model of Epstein's cell, found no evidence of the kind of elaborate plot it would have likely taken to evade detection and carry out a murder. There are many questions from Epstein's death that remain unanswered and are likely unanswerable. But what we learned from our investigation was that Epstein's death probably wasn't the result of a grand conspiracy. More likely, it was the institutional failures, the chance events, and the human errors that gave Epstein the opportunity to do something that he'd been thinking about. Steve says what they did find was that the handling of the scene helped feed the lasting suspicions about Epstein's.

death. For example, the guard who found his body and moved it as he tried to resuscitate him wasn't interviewed under oath by federal investigators until two years later. There was no DNA evidence collected, and the news that investigators took from the scene was later determined to be the wrong one. You can find the full investigation in the NY Times app or at n.yatimes.com. In California. In recent days, federal agents have knocked us the doors of family friends and former employees. Not because they found a crime, because they're simply trying to find one. Governor Gavin Newsom has announced that the Justice Department is actively investigating him

and his wife, and he accused President Trump of launching the probe for political reasons. Mr. President, come after me. I'm not going anywhere. And the country is watching. In a video posted online, Newsom, who is expected to run for president in 2028, describe the investigation as a fishing expedition and an attempt to smear him. He added, quote, we have nothing to hide. The full scope of any investigation is unclear, but Newsom's aides say part of the focus seems to be on the governor's wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and her non-profits.

For years, critics have raised the possibility of self-dealing. One of her nonprofits has a contract with a for-profit production company she owns, though no evidence of wrongdoing has ever surfaced. A person familiar with the matter confirmed that federal investigations are underway, including one looking at Siebel Newsom's finances. But the person disputed the governor's claims that it was politically motivated and said the efforts had been launched by authorities in California, not in D.C. A White House official referred all questions to the Justice Department, which declined to comment. In the streaming wars battle for your living room, a legacy media company has just announced a major new movement. move. Fox Corp, the parent company of Fox News and the Fox Broadcast Network, is spending $22 billion

to buy Roku, the streaming company behind those little black and purple remotes. If the acquisition is approved, it would give Fox a foothold in the more than 100 million households who stream content using Roku, plus access to Roku's own catalog of shows and its big advertising business. This acquisition would be the biggest bet so far by Lachlan Murdoch, who took over Fox from his father Rupert in a dramatic high-stakes succession drama that had pitted him against his siblings. For Loughlin, this is a crucial step in his push

to help Fox catch up to competitors like Netflix and Amazon as he tries to reach customers that are abandoning broadcast, the medium that built the Fox Empire. Beyond Roku, Fox has also acquired the streaming service To Be, and last year, the company launched one of its own called Fox One. As one analyst told the Times, Fox, quote, needs to future-proof itself. And finally, a few years ago, a researcher who was studying how much space people leave between each other when they're walking around, noticed something strange. Not about what he'd set out to study, the personal space question,

but about where everyone kept going. Across 40 experiments, most of his participants spontaneously veered to the left. He and his colleagues assumed there had to be an explanation, and they went down the rabbit hole. Maybe it was the layout of the room. Or no, they tried bigger than that. Maybe it's something we learned to do as adults. Maybe people in different countries choose different directions. Now, after years of research and multiple experiments with hundreds of participants, they don't have an answer, just a bigger mystery, because they found that it's widespread.

people across demographics, cultures, conditions, seem to just have a striking innate tendency to go left, bearing in a counterclockwise direction. In one experiment, for example, the researchers instructed participants to roam at will across a schoolyard while a drone flew overhead and recorded their movements. Within seconds, 80% of people were going counterclockwise. One of the co-authors of the study told the times,

quote, in principle, there is no reason for the fact that people prefer rotating counterclockwise. And yet it's clear we do. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.