Pushkin.

Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.

I'm Maria Kannakova and I'm Nate Silver.

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.

We will discuss those in an entertaining fashion.

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, 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, 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, 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.

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.

Say, like seven hundred dollars one way or something.

You're very close.

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.

Pay it.

I did, but I did it as a backup, so it's yes, it was so.

They can charge it.

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.

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 have any cars left right now, but you can wait I've had to wait for around.

Four capitalist economy.

Do you want price fixing, I'd be most capitalists don't like that.

No, no, but like what they think.

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.

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 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 holidays because there are more bad drivers on the roads who don't usually drive, but who rent cars for this occasion.

I don't know what they're doing.

I'm assuming that that's.

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.

Things down the scarity line.

Look, the answer is that from New York to DC, you take the train, New York to Boston, you fly.

You won't know why you fly, Maria a couple of reasons.

Why do you find it?

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.

Right, You've got a.

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.

Right, It is true.

It is true.

It is not very efficient.

You follow the coastline, and the coastline is very loopy, so the.

Flight in the air is like literally about thirty or forty minutes from New York to Boston, right, So that comes apairical question.

By the way, not thinking about.

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.

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.

Some clam Showder have a Samuel Adam.

The ship sponsors have a Samuel Adams logger.

Depending on the time of day.

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 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 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 have to budget the time of how do I get to the airport?

When do I get to the airport?

Yeah, people people are a little phobic about their little nitty about some of the airport stuff.

I hope our listeners know.

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.

That was very inside baseball.

But I love it, Natam here for you don't.

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.

You know, there's a silver lining.

You get through security faster.

Sure, you gave up all your privacy.

Yes, look it's a trade off.

But like also like when you have those weather delays, the amcracks often aren't much better.

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 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 is also important, which is you don't have to be that nitty these are all right.

People miss this a lot when they are calculating their.

Flight or travel options.

Right, how critical?

How much and critical is it.

For you to be late or on time?

I should say, right.

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?

Right?

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.

Figure it out.

There's a cascade of obligations, and how important your delay is changes depending on what you're doing.

The one other.

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.

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.

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?

Yeah, we wave.

The airline was like, fuck you, you're all grounded.

Motherfuckers.

You're grounding, You're making us pay too much.

This is this is something that an airline may do.

But but yeah, it makes this issue.

I can be taken off.

This is true, This is true.

The game theory of this can get complicated.

And we'll be right back after this break, Nate.

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 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?

Yeah?

You want to take turns?

I don't know.

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 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 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 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.

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.

It's very good.

Yeah, it's good, it's good.

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 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 outside of this you know, sexual scandal that is titillating audiences.

So there are much broader questions here.

Yeah, Olivia Nutsi is a kind of.

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.

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.

Please continue now.

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, 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 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.

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 would then feed that information back to him, So she was basically being a double agent in a sense.

Yeah.

Look, journalists believe it or not.

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.

About it, right.

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.

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?

Do you know?

I don't.

I don't know which sins are the most I have Dante's circles of Hell we can talk about, you.

Know, where the the worst then or like or the outer.

The the ennery, the further down you go.

It's a you're descending, so that the furthest.

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.

And all.

By the way, one of the people.

Don't realize is like people say, well, why would you even have a conversation if it's off the record?

Right?

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 there's lots of reasons we're doing this kind.

Of thing potentially.

Absolutely.

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 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 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 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.

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 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 you're writing about this?

Right?

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.

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 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?

I think in.

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.

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.

But people who wield a lot of power.

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 counterpart to that is that there are all these brilliant journalists who ask hardball questions and who still get access.

Right.

So it's not an either or situation.

It just depends on how good you are and how talented you are.

Yeah, you know, so.

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.

But Michael Wolfe is somebody.

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.

Might might not write.

You know.

That's the more extreme form of it, right, you know.

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 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.

Right, Like maybe.

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 a big trade, you're the first to know it.

Right when someone gets fired, you're the first to know it.

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.

Are my rules.

But yeah, I think journalists are probably more ethical than they've ever been about kind of the journalism handbook rules, right.

I think they're also by it.

And some of that bias comes from the fact.

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, it's a tough career.

Starting out at.

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.

Yeah, it is interesting.

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 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 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 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 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.

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.

Sure.

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?

Right?

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.

On the other hand, like.

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.

Right.

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 do lean liberal, democratic, progressive left, whatever you want.

To call it.

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 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.

You know.

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 former Fox News correspondent with a drinking problem.

But allegedly allegedly allegedly Pushkin lawyers.

But yeah, so the lines can be can be blurry?

Yeah, no, they absolutely can And we'll be back right after this.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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.

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, 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, 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.

I don't know, she has a plus your job at Vanity Fair job, right.

But she'll start, ah, she'll start a sub stuck.

And people will subscribe to it.

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.

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 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, 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 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 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.

Yeah, look I mean she might have.

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 once did.

You know, I do wonder somebody who kind of like who relies on access and juicy, gossipy tidbits.

Right.

You know, sometimes the writing and the thinking isn't interesting enough on its own.

People don't seem to have.

Like she wrote a memoir, people don't seem to like the writing and that memoir.

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 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 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.

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.

All right, sounds good.

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.

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.

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.