I studied the Epstein files. As a woman, this is what I felt - The Saturday Story
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2026
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Times journalist Helen Rumbelow spent two days sifting through the thousands of lurid, criminal and often coded messages between Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends. Buried among the shockingly misogynistic and disturbing exchanges, lies a revealing insight on how powerful men talk about women when they think no one is listening. In her widely shared article, Helen exposes not just the shocking content of those emails, but what they tell us about the mindset of powerful men.
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Warning: This episode contains some strong language from the start.
Read by: Helen Rumbelow, feature writer and columnist, The Times.
Producer: Dave Creasey.
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Read more: I studied the latest Epstein files. As a woman, this is what I felt
Clips: NBC.
Photo: Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story on Saturday. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm Manvim Rana. |
| 0:07.0 | Among the thousands of lurid exchanges between Jeffrey Epstein and his rich and influential friends, |
| 0:23.5 | there lies a lesson in how powerful men talk about women when they think no one's listening. |
| 0:30.9 | Some of these men are still in positions of power. |
| 0:39.3 | The Times writer Helen Rumbleau spent two days going through these emails |
| 0:44.3 | and reveals not only the vile contents, |
| 0:48.3 | but what she thinks can be learnt from the shocking misogyny they capture. |
| 0:53.3 | As you can imagine, this episode contains some very strong language, some of which will spare |
| 0:59.5 | you. But among the reams of articles written about Epstein in the last week, this one |
| 1:05.1 | really stood out. It caught an essential truth at the heart of the whole scandal. |
| 1:11.6 | So in case you missed it, we asked Helen to read it out. |
| 1:15.6 | Here she is. |
| 1:19.6 | To enter the Epstein files, as I did one bleak Sunday evening, a pop-up asks, |
| 1:36.1 | Are you 18 or over? |
| 1:51.5 | If you click yes, the United States Department of Justice website responds. |
| 1:54.7 | Thank you for verifying your age. |
| 2:01.6 | Is this a joke? A meta- on how little we do to prevent harm to children? |
| 2:07.6 | As the hours of my time on the site turned into days, |
| 2:11.6 | I started to see those files themselves as a Rosetta Stone |
| 2:15.6 | through which women might understand male power. |
| 2:20.3 | Power. |
... |
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