Jimmy Buffett's $275 Million Trust Feud Heads to Trial

01 • 15 Minute Read

The Wall Street Journal

Katherine Sayre

Lost in Margaritaville: The Messy Drama Over Jimmy Buffett's $275 Million Trust

At Jimmy Buffett's posthumous Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2024, his son-in-law was caught on tape mouthing an obscenity at Buffett's widow, Jane, who was seated several tables away from their daughter, Savannah. Months later, Jane texted Savannah the clip with a warning to say goodbye to a $75 million inheritance. The feud centers on the roughly $275 million trust Buffett left for Jane, which he set up with his longtime business manager, Richard Mozenter, as co-trustee. Jane accuses Mozenter of hiding financial information and billing the trust for millions in fees. Mozenter says Buffett doubted Jane's ability to manage the money and has tried to move the assets into a new trust that would strip her of control. Savannah has sided with Mozenter. Each side is suing to remove the other, and the case heads to trial in January.

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02 • 22 Minute Read

The Atlantic

Andrew Lawler

Researchers Say They've Found the Truth About Thomas Jefferson

Three hours after Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, his secretary snipped a lock of his hair and tucked it into a paper packet. Two centuries later, that hair has given Smithsonian-led researchers what they say is proof that Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, a woman he enslaved for half a century. A 1998 DNA study had pointed to someone in Jefferson's male line, which left room for doubters to blame his brother. After a secret 15-year effort, geneticists rebuilt Jefferson's full genome from the hair and matched it to descendants of two of Hemings's sons. Some carry more of his DNA than his descendants through his wife do. One, Clara Nutt, grew up hearing the family story, then was told on a school trip to Monticello that Hemings never set foot in the house. Jefferson's defenders are already pushing back, and the Trump administration has attacked the Smithsonian for dwelling on slavery.

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03 • 20 Minute Read

ProPublica

Christopher Osher and Evan Wyloge

Smoke and Mirrors: How Intoxicating Hemp Seeped Into the First Recreational Marijuana Market in the Country

In April 2024, a Denver lab found methylene chloride, a chemical linked to liver and lung cancer, in a popular brand of vapes sold at marijuana dispensaries in the state. Regulators then discovered the product wasn't marijuana at all. It was hemp, which is cheaper to grow and can be chemically converted into THC using toxic solvents. Colorado, home of the country's first recreational marijuana market, had banned intoxicating hemp in 2023 but never adopted the safeguards other states use. The state had also been warned about the vape maker months earlier and waited until June to alert the public. Independent testing of 14 dispensary vapes found three with signs of hemp, and the state's largest marijuana grower has sued regulators, calling the testing an honor system that isn't working.

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04 • 14 Minute Read

Aeon	Massimo Pigliucci

A good sceptic has more than doubt and less than certainty

In early 45 BCE, with the Roman Republic collapsing under Julius Caesar and his daughter recently dead, the statesman Cicero sat in a villa near Naples finishing a book on skeptical philosophy. His answer to how tightly we should hold our beliefs was probabilia, claims tested enough to act on with conviction but never treated as certain. The idea, borrowed from Greek skeptics, ranked beliefs by how much scrutiny they had survived, so a trivial choice needed little testing and a criminal verdict needed a lot. Cicero lived by it, executing conspirators on a judgment he knew might be wrong and later attacking Mark Antony knowing it could get him killed, which it did. The same approach underpins science and makes democratic persuasion possible. Today's self-styled vaccine and climate skeptics are its opposite, dogmatists who never update, while people demanding certainty before believing anything make the mirror-image mistake.

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Jimmy Buffett left his widow $275 million. His business manager says she can't handle it.

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