Welcome to Axisprorado, where we take just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

Presented by Bridge Bank. Be bold. Venture wisely. I'm Deppermack. On today's show, AT&T under pressure and a tech business legend retires.

But first, MIT's failing grade on Jeffrey Epstein.

So there's a nuclear reactor on MIT's campus.

Seriously, it's a small one, but it is there.

And people in the area regularly make morbid jokes about a meltdown.

But MIT right now is facing a fallout that's not physically

lethal, but just as damaging to its reputation. Specifically, reports that its media lab has much

deeper financial ties than previously reported to Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire, quote,

tax strategist and convicted pedophile who committed suicide in prison last month while

awaiting trial on new charges

of child sex trafficking. So for those who don't know, the MIT Media Lab is kind of the East Coast

School's highest profile effort to get some of that Silicon Valley shine, an R&D shop that

spins out tech companies, but without commercialization as its primary priority. For the past

eight years or so, it's been run by somebody named Joey

Ito, a famed Japanese tech entrepreneur who also apparently had a very soft spot for Epstein,

or at least for Epstein's money. Last month, Ido formally apologized for accepting small

donations from Epstein, but on Saturday, Ronan Farrow wrote in The New Yorker that the ties were

much deeper and much more lucrative than Ido had led on, with him having traveled at least twice to Epstein's private island in the U.S. Virgins and accepting millions of dollars in donations to the media lab from Epstein, who was actually on an official MIT list of people not to accept money from. More notably, some of the donations were really

from billionaires Bill Gates and Leon Black, neither of whom is yet explaining why they needed to send

their checks through a convicted sex offender. The bottom line, Jeffrey Epstein's life might be over,

but his story keeps writing new chapters. In 23 seconds, we'll go deeper with Axios chief financial

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