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