December 3, 2025 • 40 mins
Nate and Maria game out the comparative benefits (and risks) of flying vs. driving vs. taking the train when traveling for the holidays. They also discuss Olivia Nuzzi’s new memoir, her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza’s substack revelations about her, and the current state of journalistic ethics.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.
I'm Maria Kannakova and I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Today on the show, we have an interesting heiring of topics.
We're going to talk about the a disease of holiday travel, planes,
trays and automobiles. I'm a big plain guy. It turns
out Maria a little more skeptical. And then speaking of disease,
the journalist Olivia Nitzi was accused by fellow double z
Ryan Lizza, her ex fiancee, of various crimes against journalism.
(00:57):
We will discuss those in an entertaining fashion.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yes, some journalistic ethics coming right up. But first, yeah,
let's talk about Thanksgiving travel as everyone plans their travel
for the holidays are coming up. Ny you traveled by plane.
You went to Kansas City, and I had Thanksgiving in Boston,
(01:23):
where I'm from with my family. So I had all
sorts of options, and you know what, I actually thought
about all of them, because, as we talked about last year,
around this time, it can be really really tricky to
optimize holiday travel. So going to Boston is something that
you would think is super easy, right, Boston and New
York like what three and a half hours, four hours,
(01:45):
like pretty pretty close. Unfortunately, that's really not the case.
So you have a few options, right. You can drive,
so that involves a lot of risk reward trade offs
car rental and traffic. You can fly obviously, whether you
can be delayed. We know that there have been a
lot of issues with flights in the last few months,
(02:06):
so that's the issue there, and train seems to be
the safest option. However, my last train ride to Boston,
Nate took seven and a half hours because within half
an hour of leaving Penn Station, New York, we hit
something and then the train couldn't go above like forty
five miles an hour for the rest of the trip.
(02:26):
But they didn't tell us that. They just kept saying
that we'd be making up the time, and we never did.
And you want to guess how much two train tickets
were to Boston for Thanksgiving weekend? I bought these back
in September. Luckily about refundable ones, and I did get refunded.
Think about think about holiday travel Thanksgiving this weekend? How
much just normal as seloitics, I.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Say, like seven hundred dollars one way or something.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
You're very close.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
So for two people, the tickets were seventeen hundred dollars together,
and that is just absolutely ludicrous, right, So you have
all of these different things.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Pay it.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I did, but I did it as a backup, so
it's yes, it was so.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
They can charge it.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They're doing it because they can, and they do it
because they know that there is really no viable good options.
So we also had a car rental, which, by the way,
was like a fraction of the cost. Right the car
rental for five days was like five hundred dollars something
like that. Not an insignificant amount of money, but like, fine,
you know you're renting a car four or five days.
(03:39):
Now the car rental, though you have your own issues
one will you actually have a car. I don't know
if we've talked about this on the show, but rental
cars are really weird when it comes to reservations. You
make a reservation, but unlike a restaurant where you make
a reservation and there's a table waiting for you, you can
make a rental car reservation. You get there and there
ain't any cars and they say, yeah, sorry, we don't
(04:01):
have any cars left right now, but you can wait
I've had to wait for around.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Four capitalist economy. Do you want price fixing, I'd be
most capitalists don't like that.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
No, no, but like what they think.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
So we were booking tickets to Michigan to see my
family for Christmas, and yeah, from New York in coach,
it's like nine hundred bucks or something, right, and like
they figured out that, like when you have people who
are desperate to get home for something, right, you can
charge a lot of money and those lights will be full.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, an Asella knows that it has kind
of this cornered market because weather in New England can
be really bad, right, and if you need to be
home for Thanksgiving. So we had flights as well, which
were much cheaper. By the way, we had a you
know Delta shuttle reserved which you can cancel anytime, which
were you know, half the price of the trade. But
(04:55):
you also have the notion of like what if it snows, right,
what if the weather's bat what if I get stuck
on either side cars? You have a lot of control,
And we had a great smooth trip there, but it
took us seven hours to get back and I was
actually wondering, you know, as we were driving. Obviously there
is a factor of just more people on the road.
But I wonder if there are more accidents around the
(05:17):
holidays because there are more bad drivers on the roads
who don't usually drive, but who rent cars for this occasion.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
I don't know what they're doing. I'm assuming that that's.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
You have this amateur hour issue with everything. Right on
the train there's someone with an order amount of luggage.
And at the airport, right, they're fucking kids everywhere, right,
they slow.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Things down the scarity line.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Look, the answer is that from New York to DC,
you take the train, New York to Boston, you fly.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
You won't know why you fly, Maria a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Why do you find it?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
First of all, just look at the way that the
Eastern Seaboard works. Right, We're actually pretty close here in
New York as the crow files to Boston.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Right, You've got a.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Loop all the way around through fucking New Britain, Conneticut
and New Canaan, Connecticut and all these places. It's like
not even really optimize the train track, right, but like
you better like go if you have to, fucking Providence
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Right, It is true. It is true. It is not
very efficient. You follow the coastline, and the coastline is
very loopy, so the.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Flight in the air is like literally about thirty or
forty minutes from New York to Boston, right, So that
comes apairical question.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
By the way, not thinking about.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Boston, Boston, I'm not a big Boston guy, but I
will say the most underrated airport in the country is
Boston Logan Airport. It's absolutely you go through that big
dig and things like that, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
No, and it actually it makes a huge difference. I
love Logan now and Logan is now a new airport.
There's actually you can go to Legal Seafood and Logan.
You can get clam Showder.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Some clam Showder have a Samuel Adam. The ship sponsors
have a Samuel Adams logger. Depending on the time of day.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Absolutely can now it's you know, you're you're absolutely right
that when you're thinking about just the time and the
chances of like the maximization of time, I totally agree
that the plane is a way to go. The reason
why I don't always fly is because i've been so
when I go to Boston, it's always around the holidays,
right Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's times when New England weather
(07:27):
can be very unpredictable. And that's so when you're doing
this calculus, obviously you have, as with any decision, you
have a bunch of different variables. Right, you have the time,
which is huge like maximizing time. You have cost obviously,
which is important, but you also have what are what
is the risk that I'm going to get there when
I need to get there right versus not? And with
(07:49):
the with the plane, you know, with the Delta shuttle,
which is kind of the most efficient way to get
to Boston. I have had canceled flights and delayed flights
not infrequently because the weather gets really shitty this time
of year. So that I think is the major risk.
Like let's assume the price is the same with everything,
but still when it comes to airport travel, you also
(08:11):
have to budget the time of how do I get
to the airport? When do I get to the airport?
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Yeah, people people are a little phobic about their little
nitty about some of the airport stuff.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
I hope our listeners know.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
What nitty means, right, your risk averse and neurotic. It's
a poker term for someone who like folds too much? Right, oh,
or just kind of you know Alan Kessler, if you
know Alan Kessler and the poker Seine's a knit for example.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
That was very inside baseball. But I love it, Natam
here for you don't.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Need there's actually a silver bolt in my Newslayer. There's like,
when do you get to the airport calculator? People are
very nitty about airports stuff, right. The fact is you
can cut it pretty close if you want. You know,
the surveillance state has probably rubbed us savol our, privacy
and dignity. However, it does lead to substantially faster lines
at the TSA check in, so realizes the benefit from that.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
You know, there's a silver lining. You get through security faster.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Sure, you gave up all your privacy.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Yes, look it's a trade off. But like also like
when you have those weather delays, the amcracks often aren't
much better.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
This is true, but they do get there right end
of the day. It was just, you know, a choice
between bad alternatives. But we both made it. We both
made it. Back Nate, when our listeners try to maximize
their holiday travel for you know, the upcoming holidays and
for future years, Obviously some of what we talked about
is New England specific, but I think a lot of
(09:41):
it is advice that you can kind of take no
matter where your traveling, which is obviously, look at the time,
look at the cost, look at your risk of actually
getting there versus getting stuck, and how important it is
to you to get there at a specific time, at
a specific day, Because if you can afford to be
delayed a little bit, then that's it. That's a totally
different story. And what you pointed out, Nate, I think
(10:03):
is also important, which is you don't have to be
that nitty these are all right.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
People miss this a lot when they are calculating their.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Flight or travel options. Right, how critical? How much and
critical is it.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
For you to be late or on time? I should say, right.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, that's a really important question that people really do
not ask themselves often enough. They're like, oh, I don't
want to be late, but how like how close are
you pushing your travel?
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Right?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Like, if you need to be there by Thursday and
you're traveling on Wednesday, right, Like you have a little
bit of a window of flexibility if you're traveling Thursday morning. Obviously, Yeah, okay,
you're fucked, you're delayed. So it's one of these things
where you do need to.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Figure it out.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
There's a cascade of obligations, and how important your delay
is changes depending on what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
The one other.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Piece of advice I will give to our listeners is
if you are in the airport they have over sold
the flight and they are asking for volunteers, and you
are actually in a position to volunteer, do not accept
their offer because they will be willing to up it
to a pretty significant amount, and if no one takes
it within the first like ten minutes, they start panicking.
(11:12):
So then you can, like if they're offering five hundred dollars,
walk up to them and be like, I'll do it
for fifteen hundred and first class tickets or whatever it is,
and they'll they'll say yes most of the time. So
that's just a little travel hack for when your plans
are a little bit flexible.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Applying me is it like a prisoner's dilemma? Though, like that,
like I will undercut you. So we're saying that like
passengers should collude, should collude to demand more?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, we wave.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
The airline was like, fuck you, you're all grounded. Motherfuckers. You're grounding,
You're making us pay too much.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
This is this is something that an airline may do.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
But but yeah, it makes this issue. I can be
taken off.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
This is true, This is true. The game theory of
this can get complicated.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
And we'll be right back after this break, Nate.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Let's let's get down and dirty and talk some even
more inside baseball, inside New York but not just New
York DC, inside media and inside the political just realm
of political reporting drama with the scandal the right, is
there an US there around Olivia Nutzi, Ryan Lizza, lots
(12:40):
of people Rfkjune, you are lots of people implicated, Nate.
Do you want to give a little breakdown for our
listeners who might not be aware of everything, or do
you want me to do it?
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Yeah? You want to take turns? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Maria all right, Well, I can give you a little
bit of background, which is that Olivia Nutzi was a
star political reporter at New York Magazine who was known
for her voice, for her access, for her scoops, and
her scoops involved great interviews with people like Mark Sanford
(13:11):
and RFK Junior. She became engaged to Ryan Liza, who
used to be a New Yorker writer. He was fired
from The New Yorker for alleged sexual misconduct I guess,
and he was engaged to Olivia Nutzi. Then it turned
out that Olivia was having we don't know, it's still
(13:36):
unclear if it was ever physical or emotional anyway, and
improper relationship with one of her subjects while she was
covering the elections RFK Junior and she and Ryan Lizza
split up. She was dismissed from New York magazine. She
apparently then immediately started working on a book, which has
(13:57):
just come out. She was hired by Vanity Fair, and
Ryan Lizza himself launched a series of sub stack posts
where he revealed that her alleged improprieties when it came
to political reporting went far beyond RFK Junior, including an
actual physical affair with one of her other subjects, Mark Sandford.
(14:19):
And I'm assuming that there will be more revelations because
all of this stuff keeps coming out on a almost
daily He's trying to maximize engagement with a serialized, paywalled
sub stack, and apparently it's working. I think he had
like almost eight hundred thousand reads of one of his
sub stacks something like that, which is huge numbers.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
It's very good.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yeah, it's good, it's good.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
But anyway, so that's what's happening right now. And the
reason why, by the way, this matters to more than
New York Media DC media and Ryan is in DC,
Olivia is on the West Coast is because it touches
on issues of journalistic ethics, which we talked about last
week in a very different context on this show, and
ethics when it comes to political reporting, when it comes
(15:05):
to access, when it comes to kind of just how
close you want to be to the people that you're
writing about. And this comes up not just with sexual impropriety,
but with you know, people who are really friendly with
you know, Silicon Valley tycoons and write about them, right, Like,
this is a question that comes up very very frequently
(15:25):
outside of this you know, sexual scandal that is titillating audiences.
So there are much broader questions here.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Yeah, Olivia Nutsi is a kind of.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Kind of character that if like Aaron Sorkin wrote a
movie about journalism, which I guess he did, he'd insert
her in there and people would accuse him of being Yeah, misogynist. Yes,
I mean so she she got her start working as
like an intern for the Anthony Wiener.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
You can you cannot be if not only would people
accuse Sorkin of being a misogynists, but they'd accused him
of being two on the nose right with this story,
Like I'm just the irony of her starting with Anthony
Waider is just hilarious.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Please continue now.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
But her shtick has always kind of been like an
access pedler or like kind of a gossip pedler, right,
Like it's always an architect that's existed within journalism, right,
And in some ways it's kind of a throwback almost, right,
whereas like today, like journalists tend to be pretty you know,
(16:36):
self serious and things like that, which is good overall.
I mean, I think the ethics in the industry have improved,
and I you know, look, I am criticized journalists, but
I will defend the profession. You are kind of like
writing the first draft of history, and in real time, right,
you will get criticized by bipartisan idiots no matter what
(16:56):
you say, potentially, But she's definitely on this side where like, Okay,
you're gonna bend if you rules to gain more access,
right and like, and Lissa kind of accused her too,
you know, help being our FK junior with pr in essence, right.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
The accusation, by the way, let's let's just put a
finer point on it for people who aren't following along,
because this is important. Ryan Lizza says that she allegedly
would ask him and other sources about basically about opposition
research that they had on RFK Junior, and that she
(17:35):
would then feed that information back to him, So she
was basically being a double agent in a sense.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah. Look, journalists believe it or not.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Despite the broad distress that people in society have of journalists, right,
you know, they operate in the position of substantial trust. Right,
people disclose things and they wouldn't disclose to anybody else,
just taste taking the journalists like word for it. So yeah,
as someone in the industry, then anytimes like this undermine's
credibility of future sources, than then we should be pissed.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
About it, right.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
You know, one of the things accused Nancy of is
like taking a source set is off the record and
reporting it as though it's on background. People may or
we not care about the distinction on background means that
you can use what I have, but don't attribute it
to me. Off the record means note, you can't use it.
(18:27):
You can confirm it with another source, right, but like,
you can't use this at all without my permission. And
so you know, that's as far as like journalistic sins go.
That's like what's I don't know what's the more serious
kind of sin in the Catholic Church?
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
I don't know which sins are the most I have
Dante's circles of Hell we can talk about, you.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Know, where the the worst then or like or the outer.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The the ennery, the further down you go. It's a
you're descending, so that the furthest.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Is this is a couple of levels in to hell,
right like it's it's it's bad. Mostly should bow up
in your face because people shouldn't trust you to give
you anything off the record.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
And all. By the way, one of the people.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Don't realize is like people say, well, why would you
even have a conversation if it's off the record?
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Well, you know, first of all, sometimes it's the only
condition under which a source would talk to a journalist
at all. You know, sometimes they would love to hear
the story, report it, but they have to be care
about being their name on it, so they provide useful
information sometimes, so you're surprised they might agree to go
let you put things on the record later on if
they come to trust you and it's persuasive, right, So
(19:37):
there's lots of reasons we're doing this kind.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Of thing potentially.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I actually, you know, in the reporting I'm doing right
now for my book on cheating, I have a lot
of people who are willing to tell me things off
the record, but don't even want it on background because
there are you know, they don't want the repercussions, right,
and for some of the things, and this was true
when I wrote about con artists, they are also nefarious
elements at work right where people can be afraid for
(20:02):
their safety, like they just don't think it's worth it.
They don't want to kind of they just don't want
to get involved, right, But they do want to talk
to you a little bit by like confirming that yes,
this happened, or venting that yes I got cheated or
you know this kind of this this took place. But
there's kind of a limit to what they're willing to say,
and I'm more than happy to talk to people off
(20:22):
the record, right like, because then you at least get
the outlines of the story and you can start trying
to pull on other strings, and you know the story exists,
and you have, you know, a source that will kind
of potentially be helpful in the future. So I think
there are lots of reasons why you would talk off
the record. And the reason, by the way, that people
are willing to talk to me, Nate, is because I've
never burned a source, right Like, if you talk to
(20:44):
me off the record, it's going to be off the record.
If I tell you that I'm not going to use it,
I will not use it. And I think that that's
so important because especially, you know, reputation is hugely important
in journalism, but especially now with so many different you know,
attacks on the journalistic profession and distrust of the media.
(21:05):
I think it's just integrity is incredibly important, right People
need to be able to trust you, and people need
to be able to trust your reporting. And so that's
kind of the other part of it, right It's both
the it's both the fact that you burn sources, but
also can I trust your reporting? If your interests are
not to the kind of readers and to the story,
but to protecting someone promoting someone. If you say that
(21:28):
you're actually reporting a story about someone, but you're doing
pr right, Like, that's very different because you're you're not
disclosing your true motives. You're not disclosing your conflicts of interest,
which we're always asked about, Nate, I'm sure you are
as well. Whenever you write about anything, you know, you're
asked like, do you have any conflict of interest when
(21:49):
you're writing about this?
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Right?
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Like, do you have any reason why you're not going
to be an objective source on this? If I am
you know, if I'm sleeping with someone yet it's a
conflict of interest. If I'm in love with them, that's
also probably a conflict of interest. And obviously if I'm
getting paid by them, like, they're endless conflicts of interest,
but you have to disclose.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Yeah, look, I mean, you know, like I think maybe
also have like a conservative on this, right, Like, you know,
I think the biggest problem with journalists today is that
there can be a lot of group think. I think,
especially kind of in the pre i know, kind of
the peak wokeness era, that group think often leaned pretty
far toward left or liberal tropes, especially on kind of
(22:32):
like cultural issues, right, Like you know an age where
journalist are little bit more mercenary kind of in a
figurative sense, I think is is okay, right, It's like
I buy by a certain set of rules, but if
you don't buy by those rules, then yeah, that's that's
that's pretty bad, right. I you know, I think in
practice it's like not why so many Americans distrust journalists? Right?
Speaker 4 (22:54):
I think in.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
General it's like a like, I think journalism has fucked
up in a lot of ways, right, But also they're
accused of always carrying water for politicians of different kinds.
We can debate like how could it is or not right,
But it's like it's a difficult it's a difficult job.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
It is a difficult job. And when it comes to
powerful people, right, it doesn't have to be politicians. It
can be you know, titans of industry, tech moguls, it
doesn't it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
But people who wield a lot of power.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
You have to kind of walk a line between being
you know, a good journalist and having access to them.
And there are the journalists who say, yeah, you know,
I'm not going to ask, you know, as many hardball
questions because I want to be able to get these
interviews in the future. And if I become known as someone,
you know who eviscerates people, I'm not going to the
(23:44):
counterpart to that is that there are all these brilliant
journalists who ask hardball questions and who still get access.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
So it's not an either or situation. It just depends
on how good you are and how talented you are.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Yeah, you know, so.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
One extreme right is like Michael Wolfe is a journalist
who was advising Jeffrey Epstein on PR strategy, Right, I
think that's fucking insane.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
But Michael Wolfe is somebody.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Who I don't think would ever tell you that he's
totally above board, right, he'd say that I'm an access peddler,
right in that sense, I'm telling you what I am, right,
I'm transparent about it, and but I wanted to get
scoops of information that, like other people.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Might might not write. You know. That's the more extreme
form of it, right, you know.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
The one that I think is more above board and
someone who deeply has my respect is like, you know,
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, who has covered
Trump for years and years and years, going back to
like the New York City Beat for the Daily she
used to work out and things like that, right, and
like that's a little more complicated, right, if you cultivate
a relationship. I mean sometimes you know, it's also just
(24:59):
by the way in like a lower six context, like
sports media for instance, where like sometimes you might have
what are sometimes called like beat sweeteners.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Right, Like maybe.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
The the general manager is trying to send a message
to like one of his players, right, and the journalist
kind of reports the story that like you know, so
and so's on the outs, or so and so is
being considered being traded, right, and you're kind of it's
you know, you're laundering a pr message kind of coded
as journalism or things like that, right in exchange for
like getting like the scoop later on, Right when there's
(25:36):
a big trade, you're the first to know it.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
Right when someone gets fired, you're the first to know it.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
If you have a source who doesn't give a lot
of interviews to principles, and you get that interview, so
it can be like a little bit transactional but but
you know, the transparency is a big part of it.
When you have your own newsletter, it's easier to be
transparent say okay, I do this and that and the other,
and here's what I believe and here.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Are my rules.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
But yeah, I think journalists are probably more ethical than
they've ever been about kind of the journalism handbook rules, right.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
I think they're also by it. And some of that
bias comes from the fact.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
That like that there are fewer and fewer traditional journalists
that like you're kind of selecting for people who you know,
it's not you know, if you go back and like
look at journalists from like the nineteen eighties or something, right,
it was kind of almost like a working class profession.
Right now, it's like exclusively kind of like the ranks
of like the college educated, in part because, like, you know,
(26:33):
it's a tough career.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Starting out at.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Least, it's such tough career after that unless you become
a real star, in which case there is some money
or real money. Right, So you kind of have to
be from like almost like a privileged background to like
to tolerate, you know, living in a big city and
and having these kind of low incomes often early in life.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, it is interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I don't know, Nate, if you've ever read Robert Carrow's
memoirs of how he got into journalism. But you know,
there's a very funny story how his kind of first
big job he was hired as a joke because the
editor would never hire anyone from like an Ivy league
(27:19):
background or who was well educated, because he, you know,
he had this kind of notion that, like, to be
a good journalist you had to be able to kind
of get your feet on the ground, work hard, kind
of get your hands dirty, like those boys from like
well educated families couldn't hack it. And Robert Carroll went
to Princeton, and while this editor was on vacation, his
(27:43):
staff decided to play a practical joke on him and
hired Caro, his Princeton graduate, who like he would never
have hired otherwise. And obviously Caro became a superstar and
is probably one of the most respected names in journalism
by the way, Nate, someone who has also kind of
traded on access to be able to kind of craft
(28:04):
these stories that no one else could get, like the
guy was able to get access to Robert Moses, right,
that nobody could gain access to. And believe me, he
did not paint a very sympathetic portrait at the end
of the day in The Power Broker, which was, you know,
kind of this absolute feat of journalism. But Moses gave
(28:26):
him access for a long time. And the reason I
love this story Caro couldn't get to Moses originally, right
because Moses wouldn't you know, Moses knew what was good
for him and did want to talk to him, And
so Caro just drew circles of like, who you know,
who can I get to because Moses would say, like,
you know, no one in my family can talk to you,
Like he would basically prevent people from talking to him.
(28:48):
And so Caro like went out and out and out
and finally got people who'd talk to him. And then
once some people talk to him, more people talk to him.
And then eventually Moses was like, shit, all these people
are talking to him, I better talk to him, and uh.
And that's how you do it, right, Like that's good journalism,
not saying like I'll you know, I'll treat you nicely
and I'll i'll poet a Rosie Pilch.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Yeah, look, obviously one technique you can use is saying, well,
I've talked to all the other principles for the story, right,
and so you know, I want to make sure that
your viewpoint is adequately represented. Can I at the very
least run these things by you kind of thing?
Speaker 4 (29:25):
Right?
Speaker 3 (29:26):
You know, I have definitely experienced things where like if
you don't talk to a journalist, it feels like your
treatment can be worse, right, Like I don't know if
it's quite like retaliation or things like that, right, but
they might have a little bit of a chip on
their shoulder, you know.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
On the other hand, like.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
You know, like journalists can very much cherry pick stories,
and if you give them twenty minutes worth of an interview, right,
then you know, maybe one or two quotes will appear
in the story.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
So I'm actually pretty guarded about like which journalists I
talk to you on the record or off the record, right,
because I'm like, Okay, say what you want and if
you're full of shit, and I'll blast you on my
substack or on Twitter. Right, if you do a good job,
then I'll link to it and complement the story, right,
you know. Look, one other thing that helps Nutsy to
bring this story back a little bit, because most journalists
(30:20):
do lean liberal, democratic, progressive left, whatever you want.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
To call it.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
If you're someone who is seen as as friendly enough
towards non liberals, whether in the form of RFK Junior
or the kind of Trump Maga clan, right, that presents
a comparative advantage potentially, Right, It's like, you're gonna have
access to these people and like and kind of how
much you're I mean, one thing about this too, is
(30:45):
like how much you're kind of like pantomiming being in
with this kind of rebellious I guess maga crowd versus it,
you know, pantomiming versus being real. I mean sometimes people
kind of trade on that ambiguity a little bit, right, Like,
I mean, you know, Trump has taken some very funny lines, right.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
You know.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Pete Haggson, you know, was the Fox News and if
you call him a journalist exactly. Now he's the Secretary
of War apparently committing alleged, allegedly committing some war crimes
on these yeah, you know, drugs, you see allegedly you know,
you know, I don't know why you wouldn't trust a
(31:28):
former Fox News correspondent with a drinking problem.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
But allegedly allegedly allegedly Pushkin lawyers. But yeah, so the
lines can be can be blurry?
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, no, they absolutely can And we'll be back right
after this.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
One of the things that we've been careful about in
this conversation, but I'm just gonna call it out now,
is that, you know, we've focused on kind of these
broader issues as opposed to like the sexualization of this
of the thing right where like she allegedly slept with
(32:22):
Sandford Mark Sandford according to Liza and you know, sent
sexts and all of these things to RFK Junior. And
I think that that's actually, like, as a female, that
really pisses me off because they are all these tropes
right in media that oh, like she who'd you sleep
(32:44):
with to get to where you are? And like, you know,
so I hate when people actually do that because it's
so rare, Like I don't actually think that you know this,
this does not happen. And by the way, Olivia over,
I think this was like a decade ago when A
House of Cards was on air. If you remember, this
was a show with Kevin Spacey also who then disappeared
(33:07):
and was written off the show after sexual misconduct allegations
came out about him, but there was a plotline I
believe this was the first season where he ended up,
you know, sleeping with a journalist. They had a mutually
beneficial relationship, and Olivia Knutsy tweeted out a photograph of
this journalist and said, why does Hollywood think female reporters
(33:28):
sleep with their sources? And this is a tweet that
people then you know, dredged up in the last month
being like, hey, Olivia, you know this is this is
very interesting, and so I just I do want to
kind of point out that this in this particular case,
like even more lines were crossed and as a woman,
like it really just it really upsets me. But the
(33:51):
heart of the story doesn't have anything to do with that.
And I think that there was a lot of impropriety
even before we talk about the sexual impropriety, and there
doesn't have to be anything sexual when with all of
the things that we've been talking about, right with how
you pedal access, how you walk that ethical line, and
whether or not you're transparent about it, right because you
(34:11):
can absolutely report about people you're friends with if you say, hey,
you know, like I'm writing a piece about Nate Silver.
We're co hosts of a podcast and we're friends, right,
and we've known each other for years. So those are
all my disclaimers, and here's our interview, right, Like, that's
perfectly okay. I've interviewed you, you've interviewed me. Like, that's cool, right,
(34:32):
as long as but if I said I've never spoken
to Nate in my life, like this is a completely
professional thing, right, and I'm going to give you an
the unvarnished truth behind the Silver bulletin, then then that's
a little bit disingenuous, right, a lot bit disingenuous.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
I don't know how much sleeping around there is between
journalists and sources in the industry. I mean I would
I my default would be to say it's not that common, right,
but I've never been on like a beat, right, Like,
if you're going out and reporting on the campaign trail, right,
(35:11):
there's probably some hanky panky there among reporters, certainly, Right,
you're kind of in this just say Stockholm syndrome situation, right,
but you know you can treat me are in Iowa
and New Hampshire for months at a time. They're younger
people that are kind of younger campaign staffers, but not
with the not with the principles of the story, not
with the RFK Juniors and Mark Sanford's and yeah, but look,
(35:36):
I mean there's like too much of a fucking like
digital fripprint now too, you know what I mean. But
some people live for the drama, you know, some people
love to get discovered, Like I imagine that, like Olivia
Nutci is not like not terribly unhappy right now.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I don't know, she has a plus your job at
Vanity Fair job, right.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
But she'll start, ah, she'll start a sub stuck.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
And people will subscribe to it.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Did you'd read RFK juniors erotic poetry? I did you
to not give us some one star rating? So we're
not going to be there for I.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Repeat, I unfortunately read the poetry, and I'm sorry that
I did, because I can't te It's one of those
things that once you read, you can't unread, Like once
you see something, you can't unsee it, and sometimes you
just wish you could. It's now in my brain. But yes,
so this this whole thing, you know is is problematic
(36:35):
on a lot of levels. And by the way, though, Nate,
I think it shows that We're in a very different
journalistic era than we were like even five years ago.
The fact that you know, people are like, oh, like
Olivia was canceled, No, she wasn't, Like she got let
go from New York Magazine. Now she has a best
selling book and you know is at Vanity Fair. So like,
(36:56):
you know, they're there. There's a very interesting standard being
used here, and I'm very curious to see if she's
going to hold on to her job and if not,
what's going to be next, Because I do think that
we are living at a time where journalistic ethics are
incredibly important, and being someone who people can look down
(37:16):
and say, Okay, this is someone who is ethical. I
can trust what they say. I can trust talking to
them right that they're not going to misrepresent me, They're
not going to quote me out of context, They're not
going to do something underhanded. I think that that currency
has always been important, but it's it's even more important
right now when it's hard to kind of trust your
(37:37):
eyes and ears. And so I hope that the media
and that I hope that everyone behaves accordingly. And I
do think that for the most part, journalists do behave accordingly.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Yeah, look I mean she might have.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
I was going to say, you know, look in an
earlier era then should be it's going to say black ball,
but like, I don't think it's really blackball. And like
the you know, if I were working with the New
York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal or
the or the even the New York Post or whatever, right,
I would I would not hire her. There're too many
check her things on the resume now by far right,
but you know, they don't keep as much as they
(38:10):
once did. You know, I do wonder somebody who kind
of like who relies on access and juicy, gossipy tidbits.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
You know, sometimes the writing and the thinking isn't interesting
enough on its own.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
People don't seem to have. Like she wrote a memoir,
people don't seem to like the writing and that memoir.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I didn't read the memoir, but I did read Olivia
Nuncy's excerpt in Vanity Fair and it was unreadable. Just
the writing was very, very bad, and it was very
hard oftentimes for me to follow what was going on.
I think her writing in New York Magazine, she had
great writing there, and maybe it's her, Maybe it's her editors. Because,
by the way, as we wrap up, shout out to
(38:50):
good editors everywhere. You can make writings so much better.
You know, this is why, this is why the good
outlets are good, right, They hire very good people who
can make your writing shine. On that note, I think
this will not be a political slash journalist stick scandal
podcasts going forward, but I do think that this was
(39:12):
important to cover. You never know, you never know yet,
maybe you know, if this is our most popular episode today,
maybe we're just going to do a whole pivot. But
it does cover a lot of really interesting questions that
are Risky Business adjacent and you know, important things that
Nate and I both have to ask ourselves and deal
with all the time.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
If you if you followed my advice and you're flying
to Boston, you're already there, you already have the descent.
They're telling you put your laptop away, right, and so
we should probably we should probably get going.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
All right, sounds good.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm.
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya girl Lydia,
Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.
I'm Maria Kannakova and I'm Nate Silver.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Today on the show, we have an interesting heiring of topics.
We're going to talk about the a disease of holiday travel, planes,
trays and automobiles. I'm a big plain guy. It turns
out Maria a little more skeptical. And then speaking of disease,
the journalist Olivia Nitzi was accused by fellow double z
Ryan Lizza, her ex fiancee, of various crimes against journalism.
(00:57):
We will discuss those in an entertaining fashion.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yes, some journalistic ethics coming right up. But first, yeah,
let's talk about Thanksgiving travel as everyone plans their travel
for the holidays are coming up. Ny you traveled by plane.
You went to Kansas City, and I had Thanksgiving in Boston,
(01:23):
where I'm from with my family. So I had all
sorts of options, and you know what, I actually thought
about all of them, because, as we talked about last year,
around this time, it can be really really tricky to
optimize holiday travel. So going to Boston is something that
you would think is super easy, right, Boston and New
York like what three and a half hours, four hours,
(01:45):
like pretty pretty close. Unfortunately, that's really not the case.
So you have a few options, right. You can drive,
so that involves a lot of risk reward trade offs
car rental and traffic. You can fly obviously, whether you
can be delayed. We know that there have been a
lot of issues with flights in the last few months,
(02:06):
so that's the issue there, and train seems to be
the safest option. However, my last train ride to Boston,
Nate took seven and a half hours because within half
an hour of leaving Penn Station, New York, we hit
something and then the train couldn't go above like forty
five miles an hour for the rest of the trip.
(02:26):
But they didn't tell us that. They just kept saying
that we'd be making up the time, and we never did.
And you want to guess how much two train tickets
were to Boston for Thanksgiving weekend? I bought these back
in September. Luckily about refundable ones, and I did get refunded.
Think about think about holiday travel Thanksgiving this weekend? How
much just normal as seloitics, I.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Say, like seven hundred dollars one way or something.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
You're very close.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
So for two people, the tickets were seventeen hundred dollars together,
and that is just absolutely ludicrous, right, So you have
all of these different things.
Speaker 4 (03:09):
Pay it.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
I did, but I did it as a backup, so
it's yes, it was so.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
They can charge it.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They're doing it because they can, and they do it
because they know that there is really no viable good options.
So we also had a car rental, which, by the way,
was like a fraction of the cost. Right the car
rental for five days was like five hundred dollars something
like that. Not an insignificant amount of money, but like, fine,
you know you're renting a car four or five days.
(03:39):
Now the car rental, though you have your own issues
one will you actually have a car. I don't know
if we've talked about this on the show, but rental
cars are really weird when it comes to reservations. You
make a reservation, but unlike a restaurant where you make
a reservation and there's a table waiting for you, you can
make a rental car reservation. You get there and there
ain't any cars and they say, yeah, sorry, we don't
(04:01):
have any cars left right now, but you can wait
I've had to wait for around.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Four capitalist economy. Do you want price fixing, I'd be
most capitalists don't like that.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
No, no, but like what they think.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
So we were booking tickets to Michigan to see my
family for Christmas, and yeah, from New York in coach,
it's like nine hundred bucks or something, right, and like
they figured out that, like when you have people who
are desperate to get home for something, right, you can
charge a lot of money and those lights will be full.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, an Asella knows that it has kind
of this cornered market because weather in New England can
be really bad, right, and if you need to be
home for Thanksgiving. So we had flights as well, which
were much cheaper. By the way, we had a you
know Delta shuttle reserved which you can cancel anytime, which
were you know, half the price of the trade. But
(04:55):
you also have the notion of like what if it snows, right,
what if the weather's bat what if I get stuck
on either side cars? You have a lot of control,
And we had a great smooth trip there, but it
took us seven hours to get back and I was
actually wondering, you know, as we were driving. Obviously there
is a factor of just more people on the road.
But I wonder if there are more accidents around the
(05:17):
holidays because there are more bad drivers on the roads
who don't usually drive, but who rent cars for this occasion.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
I don't know what they're doing. I'm assuming that that's.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
You have this amateur hour issue with everything. Right on
the train there's someone with an order amount of luggage.
And at the airport, right, they're fucking kids everywhere, right,
they slow.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Things down the scarity line.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Look, the answer is that from New York to DC,
you take the train, New York to Boston, you fly.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
You won't know why you fly, Maria a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Why do you find it?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
First of all, just look at the way that the
Eastern Seaboard works. Right, We're actually pretty close here in
New York as the crow files to Boston.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Right, You've got a.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Loop all the way around through fucking New Britain, Conneticut
and New Canaan, Connecticut and all these places. It's like
not even really optimize the train track, right, but like
you better like go if you have to, fucking Providence
and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Right, It is true. It is true. It is not
very efficient. You follow the coastline, and the coastline is
very loopy, so the.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Flight in the air is like literally about thirty or
forty minutes from New York to Boston, right, So that
comes apairical question.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
By the way, not thinking about.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Boston, Boston, I'm not a big Boston guy, but I
will say the most underrated airport in the country is
Boston Logan Airport. It's absolutely you go through that big
dig and things like that, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
No, and it actually it makes a huge difference. I
love Logan now and Logan is now a new airport.
There's actually you can go to Legal Seafood and Logan.
You can get clam Showder.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Some clam Showder have a Samuel Adam. The ship sponsors
have a Samuel Adams logger. Depending on the time of day.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Absolutely can now it's you know, you're you're absolutely right
that when you're thinking about just the time and the
chances of like the maximization of time, I totally agree
that the plane is a way to go. The reason
why I don't always fly is because i've been so
when I go to Boston, it's always around the holidays,
right Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's times when New England weather
(07:27):
can be very unpredictable. And that's so when you're doing
this calculus, obviously you have, as with any decision, you
have a bunch of different variables. Right, you have the time,
which is huge like maximizing time. You have cost obviously,
which is important, but you also have what are what
is the risk that I'm going to get there when
I need to get there right versus not? And with
(07:49):
the with the plane, you know, with the Delta shuttle,
which is kind of the most efficient way to get
to Boston. I have had canceled flights and delayed flights
not infrequently because the weather gets really shitty this time
of year. So that I think is the major risk.
Like let's assume the price is the same with everything,
but still when it comes to airport travel, you also
(08:11):
have to budget the time of how do I get
to the airport? When do I get to the airport?
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Yeah, people people are a little phobic about their little
nitty about some of the airport stuff.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
I hope our listeners know.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
What nitty means, right, your risk averse and neurotic. It's
a poker term for someone who like folds too much? Right, oh,
or just kind of you know Alan Kessler, if you
know Alan Kessler and the poker Seine's a knit for example.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
That was very inside baseball. But I love it, Natam
here for you don't.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Need there's actually a silver bolt in my Newslayer. There's like,
when do you get to the airport calculator? People are
very nitty about airports stuff, right. The fact is you
can cut it pretty close if you want. You know,
the surveillance state has probably rubbed us savol our, privacy
and dignity. However, it does lead to substantially faster lines
at the TSA check in, so realizes the benefit from that.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
You know, there's a silver lining. You get through security faster.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Sure, you gave up all your privacy.
Speaker 4 (09:11):
Yes, look it's a trade off. But like also like
when you have those weather delays, the amcracks often aren't
much better.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
This is true, but they do get there right end
of the day. It was just, you know, a choice
between bad alternatives. But we both made it. We both
made it. Back Nate, when our listeners try to maximize
their holiday travel for you know, the upcoming holidays and
for future years, Obviously some of what we talked about
is New England specific, but I think a lot of
(09:41):
it is advice that you can kind of take no
matter where your traveling, which is obviously, look at the time,
look at the cost, look at your risk of actually
getting there versus getting stuck, and how important it is
to you to get there at a specific time, at
a specific day, Because if you can afford to be
delayed a little bit, then that's it. That's a totally
different story. And what you pointed out, Nate, I think
(10:03):
is also important, which is you don't have to be
that nitty these are all right.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
People miss this a lot when they are calculating their.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Flight or travel options. Right, how critical? How much and
critical is it.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
For you to be late or on time? I should say, right.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, that's a really important question that people really do
not ask themselves often enough. They're like, oh, I don't
want to be late, but how like how close are
you pushing your travel?
Speaker 4 (10:27):
Right?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Like, if you need to be there by Thursday and
you're traveling on Wednesday, right, Like you have a little
bit of a window of flexibility if you're traveling Thursday morning. Obviously, Yeah, okay,
you're fucked, you're delayed. So it's one of these things
where you do need to.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Figure it out.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
There's a cascade of obligations, and how important your delay
is changes depending on what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
The one other.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Piece of advice I will give to our listeners is
if you are in the airport they have over sold
the flight and they are asking for volunteers, and you
are actually in a position to volunteer, do not accept
their offer because they will be willing to up it
to a pretty significant amount, and if no one takes
it within the first like ten minutes, they start panicking.
(11:12):
So then you can, like if they're offering five hundred dollars,
walk up to them and be like, I'll do it
for fifteen hundred and first class tickets or whatever it is,
and they'll they'll say yes most of the time. So
that's just a little travel hack for when your plans
are a little bit flexible.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Applying me is it like a prisoner's dilemma? Though, like that,
like I will undercut you. So we're saying that like
passengers should collude, should collude to demand more?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, we wave.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
The airline was like, fuck you, you're all grounded. Motherfuckers. You're grounding,
You're making us pay too much.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
This is this is something that an airline may do.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
But but yeah, it makes this issue. I can be
taken off.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
This is true, This is true. The game theory of
this can get complicated.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
And we'll be right back after this break, Nate.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Let's let's get down and dirty and talk some even
more inside baseball, inside New York but not just New
York DC, inside media and inside the political just realm
of political reporting drama with the scandal the right, is
there an US there around Olivia Nutzi, Ryan Lizza, lots
(12:40):
of people Rfkjune, you are lots of people implicated, Nate.
Do you want to give a little breakdown for our
listeners who might not be aware of everything, or do
you want me to do it?
Speaker 4 (12:49):
Yeah? You want to take turns? I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Maria all right, Well, I can give you a little
bit of background, which is that Olivia Nutzi was a
star political reporter at New York Magazine who was known
for her voice, for her access, for her scoops, and
her scoops involved great interviews with people like Mark Sanford
(13:11):
and RFK Junior. She became engaged to Ryan Liza, who
used to be a New Yorker writer. He was fired
from The New Yorker for alleged sexual misconduct I guess,
and he was engaged to Olivia Nutzi. Then it turned
out that Olivia was having we don't know, it's still
(13:36):
unclear if it was ever physical or emotional anyway, and
improper relationship with one of her subjects while she was
covering the elections RFK Junior and she and Ryan Lizza
split up. She was dismissed from New York magazine. She
apparently then immediately started working on a book, which has
(13:57):
just come out. She was hired by Vanity Fair, and
Ryan Lizza himself launched a series of sub stack posts
where he revealed that her alleged improprieties when it came
to political reporting went far beyond RFK Junior, including an
actual physical affair with one of her other subjects, Mark Sandford.
(14:19):
And I'm assuming that there will be more revelations because
all of this stuff keeps coming out on a almost
daily He's trying to maximize engagement with a serialized, paywalled
sub stack, and apparently it's working. I think he had
like almost eight hundred thousand reads of one of his
sub stacks something like that, which is huge numbers.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
It's very good.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yeah, it's good, it's good.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
But anyway, so that's what's happening right now. And the
reason why, by the way, this matters to more than
New York Media DC media and Ryan is in DC,
Olivia is on the West Coast is because it touches
on issues of journalistic ethics, which we talked about last
week in a very different context on this show, and
ethics when it comes to political reporting, when it comes
(15:05):
to access, when it comes to kind of just how
close you want to be to the people that you're
writing about. And this comes up not just with sexual impropriety,
but with you know, people who are really friendly with
you know, Silicon Valley tycoons and write about them, right, Like,
this is a question that comes up very very frequently
(15:25):
outside of this you know, sexual scandal that is titillating audiences.
So there are much broader questions here.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
Yeah, Olivia Nutsi is a kind of.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Kind of character that if like Aaron Sorkin wrote a
movie about journalism, which I guess he did, he'd insert
her in there and people would accuse him of being Yeah, misogynist. Yes,
I mean so she she got her start working as
like an intern for the Anthony Wiener.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
You can you cannot be if not only would people
accuse Sorkin of being a misogynists, but they'd accused him
of being two on the nose right with this story,
Like I'm just the irony of her starting with Anthony
Waider is just hilarious.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Please continue now.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
But her shtick has always kind of been like an
access pedler or like kind of a gossip pedler, right,
Like it's always an architect that's existed within journalism, right,
And in some ways it's kind of a throwback almost, right,
whereas like today, like journalists tend to be pretty you know,
(16:36):
self serious and things like that, which is good overall.
I mean, I think the ethics in the industry have improved,
and I you know, look, I am criticized journalists, but
I will defend the profession. You are kind of like
writing the first draft of history, and in real time, right,
you will get criticized by bipartisan idiots no matter what
(16:56):
you say, potentially, But she's definitely on this side where like, Okay,
you're gonna bend if you rules to gain more access,
right and like, and Lissa kind of accused her too,
you know, help being our FK junior with pr in essence, right.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
The accusation, by the way, let's let's just put a
finer point on it for people who aren't following along,
because this is important. Ryan Lizza says that she allegedly
would ask him and other sources about basically about opposition
research that they had on RFK Junior, and that she
(17:35):
would then feed that information back to him, So she
was basically being a double agent in a sense.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah. Look, journalists believe it or not.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Despite the broad distress that people in society have of journalists, right,
you know, they operate in the position of substantial trust. Right,
people disclose things and they wouldn't disclose to anybody else,
just taste taking the journalists like word for it. So yeah,
as someone in the industry, then anytimes like this undermine's
credibility of future sources, than then we should be pissed.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
About it, right.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
You know, one of the things accused Nancy of is
like taking a source set is off the record and
reporting it as though it's on background. People may or
we not care about the distinction on background means that
you can use what I have, but don't attribute it
to me. Off the record means note, you can't use it.
(18:27):
You can confirm it with another source, right, but like,
you can't use this at all without my permission. And
so you know, that's as far as like journalistic sins go.
That's like what's I don't know what's the more serious
kind of sin in the Catholic Church?
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Do you know?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
I don't know which sins are the most I have
Dante's circles of Hell we can talk about, you.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Know, where the the worst then or like or the outer.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The the ennery, the further down you go. It's a
you're descending, so that the furthest.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Is this is a couple of levels in to hell,
right like it's it's it's bad. Mostly should bow up
in your face because people shouldn't trust you to give
you anything off the record.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
And all. By the way, one of the people.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Don't realize is like people say, well, why would you
even have a conversation if it's off the record?
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Right?
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Well, you know, first of all, sometimes it's the only
condition under which a source would talk to a journalist
at all. You know, sometimes they would love to hear
the story, report it, but they have to be care
about being their name on it, so they provide useful
information sometimes, so you're surprised they might agree to go
let you put things on the record later on if
they come to trust you and it's persuasive, right, So
(19:37):
there's lots of reasons we're doing this kind.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Of thing potentially.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I actually, you know, in the reporting I'm doing right
now for my book on cheating, I have a lot
of people who are willing to tell me things off
the record, but don't even want it on background because
there are you know, they don't want the repercussions, right,
and for some of the things, and this was true
when I wrote about con artists, they are also nefarious
elements at work right where people can be afraid for
(20:02):
their safety, like they just don't think it's worth it.
They don't want to kind of they just don't want
to get involved, right, But they do want to talk
to you a little bit by like confirming that yes,
this happened, or venting that yes I got cheated or
you know this kind of this this took place. But
there's kind of a limit to what they're willing to say,
and I'm more than happy to talk to people off
(20:22):
the record, right like, because then you at least get
the outlines of the story and you can start trying
to pull on other strings, and you know the story exists,
and you have, you know, a source that will kind
of potentially be helpful in the future. So I think
there are lots of reasons why you would talk off
the record. And the reason, by the way, that people
are willing to talk to me, Nate, is because I've
never burned a source, right Like, if you talk to
(20:44):
me off the record, it's going to be off the record.
If I tell you that I'm not going to use it,
I will not use it. And I think that that's
so important because especially, you know, reputation is hugely important
in journalism, but especially now with so many different you know,
attacks on the journalistic profession and distrust of the media.
(21:05):
I think it's just integrity is incredibly important, right People
need to be able to trust you, and people need
to be able to trust your reporting. And so that's
kind of the other part of it, right It's both
the it's both the fact that you burn sources, but
also can I trust your reporting? If your interests are
not to the kind of readers and to the story,
but to protecting someone promoting someone. If you say that
(21:28):
you're actually reporting a story about someone, but you're doing
pr right, Like, that's very different because you're you're not
disclosing your true motives. You're not disclosing your conflicts of interest,
which we're always asked about, Nate, I'm sure you are
as well. Whenever you write about anything, you know, you're
asked like, do you have any conflict of interest when
(21:49):
you're writing about this?
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Right?
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Like, do you have any reason why you're not going
to be an objective source on this? If I am
you know, if I'm sleeping with someone yet it's a
conflict of interest. If I'm in love with them, that's
also probably a conflict of interest. And obviously if I'm
getting paid by them, like, they're endless conflicts of interest,
but you have to disclose.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Yeah, look, I mean, you know, like I think maybe
also have like a conservative on this, right, Like, you know,
I think the biggest problem with journalists today is that
there can be a lot of group think. I think,
especially kind of in the pre i know, kind of
the peak wokeness era, that group think often leaned pretty
far toward left or liberal tropes, especially on kind of
(22:32):
like cultural issues, right, Like you know an age where
journalist are little bit more mercenary kind of in a
figurative sense, I think is is okay, right, It's like
I buy by a certain set of rules, but if
you don't buy by those rules, then yeah, that's that's
that's pretty bad, right. I you know, I think in
practice it's like not why so many Americans distrust journalists? Right?
Speaker 4 (22:54):
I think in.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
General it's like a like, I think journalism has fucked
up in a lot of ways, right, But also they're
accused of always carrying water for politicians of different kinds.
We can debate like how could it is or not right,
But it's like it's a difficult it's a difficult job.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
It is a difficult job. And when it comes to
powerful people, right, it doesn't have to be politicians. It
can be you know, titans of industry, tech moguls, it
doesn't it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
But people who wield a lot of power.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
You have to kind of walk a line between being
you know, a good journalist and having access to them.
And there are the journalists who say, yeah, you know,
I'm not going to ask, you know, as many hardball
questions because I want to be able to get these
interviews in the future. And if I become known as someone,
you know who eviscerates people, I'm not going to the
(23:44):
counterpart to that is that there are all these brilliant
journalists who ask hardball questions and who still get access.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
So it's not an either or situation. It just depends
on how good you are and how talented you are.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Yeah, you know, so.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
One extreme right is like Michael Wolfe is a journalist
who was advising Jeffrey Epstein on PR strategy, Right, I
think that's fucking insane.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
But Michael Wolfe is somebody.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Who I don't think would ever tell you that he's
totally above board, right, he'd say that I'm an access peddler,
right in that sense, I'm telling you what I am, right,
I'm transparent about it, and but I wanted to get
scoops of information that, like other people.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Might might not write. You know. That's the more extreme
form of it, right, you know.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
The one that I think is more above board and
someone who deeply has my respect is like, you know,
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, who has covered
Trump for years and years and years, going back to
like the New York City Beat for the Daily she
used to work out and things like that, right, and
like that's a little more complicated, right, if you cultivate
a relationship. I mean sometimes you know, it's also just
(24:59):
by the way in like a lower six context, like
sports media for instance, where like sometimes you might have
what are sometimes called like beat sweeteners.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
Right, Like maybe.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
The the general manager is trying to send a message
to like one of his players, right, and the journalist
kind of reports the story that like you know, so
and so's on the outs, or so and so is
being considered being traded, right, and you're kind of it's
you know, you're laundering a pr message kind of coded
as journalism or things like that, right in exchange for
like getting like the scoop later on, Right when there's
(25:36):
a big trade, you're the first to know it.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
Right when someone gets fired, you're the first to know it.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
If you have a source who doesn't give a lot
of interviews to principles, and you get that interview, so
it can be like a little bit transactional but but
you know, the transparency is a big part of it.
When you have your own newsletter, it's easier to be
transparent say okay, I do this and that and the other,
and here's what I believe and here.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Are my rules.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
But yeah, I think journalists are probably more ethical than
they've ever been about kind of the journalism handbook rules, right.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
I think they're also by it. And some of that
bias comes from the fact.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
That like that there are fewer and fewer traditional journalists
that like you're kind of selecting for people who you know,
it's not you know, if you go back and like
look at journalists from like the nineteen eighties or something, right,
it was kind of almost like a working class profession.
Right now, it's like exclusively kind of like the ranks
of like the college educated, in part because, like, you know,
(26:33):
it's a tough career.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Starting out at.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Least, it's such tough career after that unless you become
a real star, in which case there is some money
or real money. Right, So you kind of have to
be from like almost like a privileged background to like
to tolerate, you know, living in a big city and
and having these kind of low incomes often early in life.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, it is interesting.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I don't know, Nate, if you've ever read Robert Carrow's
memoirs of how he got into journalism. But you know,
there's a very funny story how his kind of first
big job he was hired as a joke because the
editor would never hire anyone from like an Ivy league
(27:19):
background or who was well educated, because he, you know,
he had this kind of notion that, like, to be
a good journalist you had to be able to kind
of get your feet on the ground, work hard, kind
of get your hands dirty, like those boys from like
well educated families couldn't hack it. And Robert Carroll went
to Princeton, and while this editor was on vacation, his
(27:43):
staff decided to play a practical joke on him and
hired Caro, his Princeton graduate, who like he would never
have hired otherwise. And obviously Caro became a superstar and
is probably one of the most respected names in journalism
by the way, Nate, someone who has also kind of
traded on access to be able to kind of craft
(28:04):
these stories that no one else could get, like the
guy was able to get access to Robert Moses, right,
that nobody could gain access to. And believe me, he
did not paint a very sympathetic portrait at the end
of the day in The Power Broker, which was, you know,
kind of this absolute feat of journalism. But Moses gave
(28:26):
him access for a long time. And the reason I
love this story Caro couldn't get to Moses originally, right
because Moses wouldn't you know, Moses knew what was good
for him and did want to talk to him, And
so Caro just drew circles of like, who you know,
who can I get to because Moses would say, like,
you know, no one in my family can talk to you,
Like he would basically prevent people from talking to him.
(28:48):
And so Caro like went out and out and out
and finally got people who'd talk to him. And then
once some people talk to him, more people talk to him.
And then eventually Moses was like, shit, all these people
are talking to him, I better talk to him, and uh.
And that's how you do it, right, Like that's good journalism,
not saying like I'll you know, I'll treat you nicely
and I'll i'll poet a Rosie Pilch.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Yeah, look, obviously one technique you can use is saying, well,
I've talked to all the other principles for the story, right,
and so you know, I want to make sure that
your viewpoint is adequately represented. Can I at the very
least run these things by you kind of thing?
Speaker 4 (29:25):
Right?
Speaker 3 (29:26):
You know, I have definitely experienced things where like if
you don't talk to a journalist, it feels like your
treatment can be worse, right, Like I don't know if
it's quite like retaliation or things like that, right, but
they might have a little bit of a chip on
their shoulder, you know.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
On the other hand, like.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
You know, like journalists can very much cherry pick stories,
and if you give them twenty minutes worth of an interview, right,
then you know, maybe one or two quotes will appear
in the story.
Speaker 4 (29:56):
Right.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
So I'm actually pretty guarded about like which journalists I
talk to you on the record or off the record, right,
because I'm like, Okay, say what you want and if
you're full of shit, and I'll blast you on my
substack or on Twitter. Right, if you do a good job,
then I'll link to it and complement the story, right,
you know. Look, one other thing that helps Nutsy to
bring this story back a little bit, because most journalists
(30:20):
do lean liberal, democratic, progressive left, whatever you want.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
To call it.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
If you're someone who is seen as as friendly enough
towards non liberals, whether in the form of RFK Junior
or the kind of Trump Maga clan, right, that presents
a comparative advantage potentially, Right, It's like, you're gonna have
access to these people and like and kind of how
much you're I mean, one thing about this too, is
(30:45):
like how much you're kind of like pantomiming being in
with this kind of rebellious I guess maga crowd versus it,
you know, pantomiming versus being real. I mean sometimes people
kind of trade on that ambiguity a little bit, right, Like,
I mean, you know, Trump has taken some very funny lines, right.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
You know.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Pete Haggson, you know, was the Fox News and if
you call him a journalist exactly. Now he's the Secretary
of War apparently committing alleged, allegedly committing some war crimes
on these yeah, you know, drugs, you see allegedly you know,
you know, I don't know why you wouldn't trust a
(31:28):
former Fox News correspondent with a drinking problem.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
But allegedly allegedly allegedly Pushkin lawyers. But yeah, so the
lines can be can be blurry?
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Yeah, no, they absolutely can And we'll be back right
after this.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
One of the things that we've been careful about in
this conversation, but I'm just gonna call it out now,
is that, you know, we've focused on kind of these
broader issues as opposed to like the sexualization of this
of the thing right where like she allegedly slept with
(32:22):
Sandford Mark Sandford according to Liza and you know, sent
sexts and all of these things to RFK Junior. And
I think that that's actually, like, as a female, that
really pisses me off because they are all these tropes
right in media that oh, like she who'd you sleep
(32:44):
with to get to where you are? And like, you know,
so I hate when people actually do that because it's
so rare, Like I don't actually think that you know this,
this does not happen. And by the way, Olivia over,
I think this was like a decade ago when A
House of Cards was on air. If you remember, this
was a show with Kevin Spacey also who then disappeared
(33:07):
and was written off the show after sexual misconduct allegations
came out about him, but there was a plotline I
believe this was the first season where he ended up,
you know, sleeping with a journalist. They had a mutually
beneficial relationship, and Olivia Knutsy tweeted out a photograph of
this journalist and said, why does Hollywood think female reporters
(33:28):
sleep with their sources? And this is a tweet that
people then you know, dredged up in the last month
being like, hey, Olivia, you know this is this is
very interesting, and so I just I do want to
kind of point out that this in this particular case,
like even more lines were crossed and as a woman,
like it really just it really upsets me. But the
(33:51):
heart of the story doesn't have anything to do with that.
And I think that there was a lot of impropriety
even before we talk about the sexual impropriety, and there
doesn't have to be anything sexual when with all of
the things that we've been talking about, right with how
you pedal access, how you walk that ethical line, and
whether or not you're transparent about it, right because you
(34:11):
can absolutely report about people you're friends with if you say, hey,
you know, like I'm writing a piece about Nate Silver.
We're co hosts of a podcast and we're friends, right,
and we've known each other for years. So those are
all my disclaimers, and here's our interview, right, Like, that's
perfectly okay. I've interviewed you, you've interviewed me. Like, that's cool, right,
(34:32):
as long as but if I said I've never spoken
to Nate in my life, like this is a completely
professional thing, right, and I'm going to give you an
the unvarnished truth behind the Silver bulletin, then then that's
a little bit disingenuous, right, a lot bit disingenuous.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
I don't know how much sleeping around there is between
journalists and sources in the industry. I mean I would
I my default would be to say it's not that common, right,
but I've never been on like a beat, right, Like,
if you're going out and reporting on the campaign trail, right,
(35:11):
there's probably some hanky panky there among reporters, certainly, Right,
you're kind of in this just say Stockholm syndrome situation, right,
but you know you can treat me are in Iowa
and New Hampshire for months at a time. They're younger
people that are kind of younger campaign staffers, but not
with the not with the principles of the story, not
with the RFK Juniors and Mark Sanford's and yeah, but look,
(35:36):
I mean there's like too much of a fucking like
digital fripprint now too, you know what I mean. But
some people live for the drama, you know, some people
love to get discovered, Like I imagine that, like Olivia
Nutci is not like not terribly unhappy right now.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
I don't know, she has a plus your job at
Vanity Fair job, right.
Speaker 4 (35:58):
But she'll start, ah, she'll start a sub stuck.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
And people will subscribe to it.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
Did you'd read RFK juniors erotic poetry? I did you
to not give us some one star rating? So we're
not going to be there for I.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Repeat, I unfortunately read the poetry, and I'm sorry that
I did, because I can't te It's one of those
things that once you read, you can't unread, Like once
you see something, you can't unsee it, and sometimes you
just wish you could. It's now in my brain. But yes,
so this this whole thing, you know is is problematic
(36:35):
on a lot of levels. And by the way, though, Nate,
I think it shows that We're in a very different
journalistic era than we were like even five years ago.
The fact that you know, people are like, oh, like
Olivia was canceled, No, she wasn't, Like she got let
go from New York Magazine. Now she has a best
selling book and you know is at Vanity Fair. So like,
(36:56):
you know, they're there. There's a very interesting standard being
used here, and I'm very curious to see if she's
going to hold on to her job and if not,
what's going to be next, Because I do think that
we are living at a time where journalistic ethics are
incredibly important, and being someone who people can look down
(37:16):
and say, Okay, this is someone who is ethical. I
can trust what they say. I can trust talking to
them right that they're not going to misrepresent me, They're
not going to quote me out of context, They're not
going to do something underhanded. I think that that currency
has always been important, but it's it's even more important
right now when it's hard to kind of trust your
(37:37):
eyes and ears. And so I hope that the media
and that I hope that everyone behaves accordingly. And I
do think that for the most part, journalists do behave accordingly.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
Yeah, look I mean she might have.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
I was going to say, you know, look in an
earlier era then should be it's going to say black ball,
but like, I don't think it's really blackball. And like
the you know, if I were working with the New
York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal or
the or the even the New York Post or whatever, right,
I would I would not hire her. There're too many
check her things on the resume now by far right,
but you know, they don't keep as much as they
(38:10):
once did. You know, I do wonder somebody who kind
of like who relies on access and juicy, gossipy tidbits.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
You know, sometimes the writing and the thinking isn't interesting
enough on its own.
Speaker 4 (38:25):
People don't seem to have. Like she wrote a memoir,
people don't seem to like the writing and that memoir.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
I didn't read the memoir, but I did read Olivia
Nuncy's excerpt in Vanity Fair and it was unreadable. Just
the writing was very, very bad, and it was very
hard oftentimes for me to follow what was going on.
I think her writing in New York Magazine, she had
great writing there, and maybe it's her, Maybe it's her editors. Because,
by the way, as we wrap up, shout out to
(38:50):
good editors everywhere. You can make writings so much better.
You know, this is why, this is why the good
outlets are good, right, They hire very good people who
can make your writing shine. On that note, I think
this will not be a political slash journalist stick scandal
podcasts going forward, but I do think that this was
(39:12):
important to cover. You never know, you never know yet,
maybe you know, if this is our most popular episode today,
maybe we're just going to do a whole pivot. But
it does cover a lot of really interesting questions that
are Risky Business adjacent and you know, important things that
Nate and I both have to ask ourselves and deal
with all the time.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
If you if you followed my advice and you're flying
to Boston, you're already there, you already have the descent.
They're telling you put your laptop away, right, and so
we should probably we should probably get going.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
All right, sounds good.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Let us know what you think of the show. Reach
out to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm.
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a cool
production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya girl Lydia,
Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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