The Press Box - Olivia Nuzzi, Ryan Lizza, and the Frenzied Rollout of 'American Canto'

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David dive into everything Olivia Nuzzi, starting with Jacob Bernstein’s New York Times piece, including what was said in his profile of Nuzzi and whether this is the right kind of profile for her. Next, they discuss the excerpt of Nuzzi’s book, 'American Canto,' released in Vanity Fair and whether the writing in this excerpt is “good” (25:44). Afterward, Bryan and David react to the bombshell claim by Ryan Lizza (Nuzzi’s ex- fiancé) that RFK Jr. isn't the only presidential candidate she has had a relationship with (40:40). Lastly, the show ends with the guys giving their thoughts on Marjorie Taylor Greene’s about-face on Trump (59:46). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Bruce Baldwin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Forget the piano music because we've got to talk about Olivia Nutsi. Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, producer Bruce Baldwin here. David, within three days, we got the following items. One, a much chewed over Olivia Nutsi, New York Times profile. Mm-hmm. Two, a Vanity Fair excerpt of her new book, American Canto. And then, on Monday night, a by God, that's Ryan Liz's music run in by her former fiance,

a political reporter himself who accused Nutsi of having an affair with a politician that isn't Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Go on? Is there more or is that it? That's where we begin our journey. let's start with the time story which was written by jacob bernstein and i'll just full disclosure up top because this feels like one of those podcasts where full disclosure should be made a big deal of i worked with jacob of the daily beast i worked with ryan lizzie the new republic i have not kept up a relationship with either one of them just putting that out there jacob bernstein david went to california to profile nutsi and if you have spent the last year of your life doing

something other than text reporters. Olivia Nutsi was a wonder-kinned Washington correspondent for New York Magazine. She got that job when she was 24 years old. She wrote sparkling pieces about Donald Trump and Trump World and Joe Biden. She and Ryan Liza, her then-fiancee, who was a big writer at Politico, were writing a book about the 2024 election. Who contracted to write, yes. contracted to write and presumably they had you know scribbled down a chapter or two then it was revealed during the campaign that nootzi was having a relationship with rfk junior and last october

new york magazine fired her according to bernstein that's the first time i'd ever seen that word i think we were calling it a parting of ways back in the day now a little more than a year later Newtsey has written American Canto to tell the whole story. Now that's what we already knew. That's where we begin. That was the juiciest preface in journalism history. Here's how the Bernstein Times profile begins.

Olivia Nutsi loved him. She loved the politician, even though she was a political reporter and he was then a presidential candidate she had written about. She loved his eyes, quote, blue is the flame. She loved that, quote, the sight of something as trivial as a rose could move him to tears.

She loved his insatiable appetites in his, quote, particular complications and particular darkness. But she said, I love you only after he said it first. He called her Livy and wrote her poems. He said he wanted her to have his baby. He promised to take a bullet for her. Is this where I jump in? Sure. So you've got all these connections to these people.

You're the inside journal borderline conflicted one. Let me take... Don't make it sound like I'm enmeshed in this whole thing. I just worked with a couple of these people. Let me take the point of view of the outsider here. Because this is, you know, this whole thing over the past two days has just swallowed our Twitter time. timelines and threads and everything else.

But from outside the journalism world, I've seen a fair number of tweets, actually an avalanche of tweets from people who are writers who are struggling or people, you know, or kind of up and coming, or people just outside of writing and journalism altogether who are basically just like, why? Like not why do we care about it? They get the salaciousness of the whole thing. but specific to the New York Times profile, why are we writing this piece?

Why is this piece commissioned? I guess this goes to the bigger point. You know, why, why does Olivia Nutsi get to be the West Coast editor of Vanity Fair after what she's done, right? Why does she get this book deal, you know, not the one she was co-writing, the one, the American Canto one. You know, why is this happening? I think is the biggest one, is the is the overarching question.

And I guess the answer, such as so much as there is one, comes down to because scandal, a story, even a relatively minor scandal. And I guess that's from the journalism side. You know what? This really never became an RFK as having an affair story. It was always just the kind of Olivia Nutsi as having an affair with RFK, is the end of the story. That kind of scandal is a bigger deal than anything.

that would just normally happen to a journalist or that would happen in journalism, right? That like it's, it is inherently a bigger story than could be ignored by any sort of sense of journalistic propriety, right? I mean, why else is the New York Times doing this profile? Well, I think there's a lot of answers to why. But if we take the nuisance and the journalism out of it, if somebody was just coming forward and saying, I was in some kind of digital relationship with RFK Jr. Which, by the way, is not true. I know, but let's just say.

We're taking their word for this. By the way, I totally believe that it could happen. I struggle to believe that you'd be exchanging I love you. So there's all the premise of the story. Like, he said he loved her three times before she said it back without there being any sort of physical, any handholding or any. anything, just sort of just, it doesn't pass the smell test, but more than anything else and take this from a, you know, determined liar, anytime that the truth just lines up exactly with like where you could make a clean break, anytime it's, it's too perfect a line,

it's probably not true, right? But anyway, go on, go on. As I was saying, let's say somebody came forward that was not Olivia Nudzi that had never covered RFK Jr. and just had all the same details that we read in that opening paragraph. Yeah. They were in a relationship, however ambiguous, to whatever extent it progressed. And they were doing this while RFK Jr. was running for president. Would that not be a story? Would people not be covering that? Sure. But it feels like people don't even care about the RFK half of it. Right? It's more like she's more like the affair is with an, the affair is with,

God, I can't even, I can't even think of what a good example. example would be like he's in a certain class of like politics oddball which again maybe goes to the bigger argument that it's better to be sort of like internet famous it's a than it is to be in in america today than it is to be like like politics famous or journalism famous but like rfk is in a different category from a high a high profile government official you know he is a he is there is a separate category for political oddballs like it might be a a a a high profile government official you know he is a he is a people who are named in these various stories, he's the highest level of whatever category like Dr. Oz and Corey Lewandowski are in,

right? But he's not, but it's a separate category from high ranking government official. But yeah, no, I mean, listen, I don't disagree,

but it is just sort of like the tone of the New York Times piece. Listen, I enjoyed the New York Times piece. It was a very good, it was, it was a very like, definitely an interesting piece to read.

But it was definitely the sort of profile that you like when you're when you're when you're sketching this thing out it's a celebrity profile right i mean there's nothing the content yes was interesting and and it was it was i think it was probably it's probably informative for a whole lot of readers who are like are like sort of loosely following this but don't really remember all the threads like it gets everything in there but there's not like this wasn't a and what is she going to do at the helm of the west coast office of the vanity fair piece you know this wasn't about like the future of journal This wasn't it. There was there wasn't there was no like actual meat to the story. It was just a celebrity profile.

That's a really great percent. I think that's exactly right. I mean, from, you know, riding around in the convertible with the top down to vaping. Yeah. Like a Lana Del Rey song come to life. That's language straight out of a celebrity profile. Yeah. Let me show you my favorite rock. Yeah. All this kind of like it was. Yeah. Yeah. And I and an interview in search of a thing. Yeah. But it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, an interview just because. You know, that's what a celebrity profile is. You're a celebrity. Of course I want to talk to you. Yeah.

And there is a little bit of that in this piece. And you're right that it doesn't seem to have accrued to RFK. His and his wife's denials notwithstanding. Mm-hmm. And maybe if bear carcass and brainworm were already on your CV, it would take a lot to, you know, get, get, get onto that somewhere, even with something like this, even with something is spectacular or Well, it's true.

I mean, yes, yeah. I mean, there's definitely, you got to look in the mirror when you can have an affair with a journalist and everybody's talking about it on her end and nobody really cares about it on your end because it's just there's so much kukiness coming out of the RFK junior cam, you know, just quarters. But yes, go on. Let's also talk about another aspect of the why, which was coming from journalists who were reading this profile in the Times and saying, wait a second, she messed up. She did something wrong.

Yeah. And as you point out, she went from New York Magazine all the way down to Vanity Fair, which is to say she basically made a lateral move. Yeah. She got a book contract out of this. She is being written about as a celebrity. Mm-hmm. What about the rest of us that didn't do what she?

did. Yes. Yeah, I think that's the point. Right? And I especially think this with women who cover politics or sports or anything. Yeah. Because Nutsi has taken the oldest, shittiest line about women in this business and she has made it real. Yeah. And if you're looking at that, you're like, wait a second. I get hit with garbage like this all the time. Yeah. And now there is an example of this out in the universe for people to point at? Yeah. No, it's totally right. There is actually a really, I think, a good piece that really hit the exact right point about that.

Inmediate by Colby Hall. I don't know if you saw this one, but he says, what strikes me is how our comeback strategy makes perfect sense, not morally perhaps, but economically, structurally. The glamour shots, the literary memoir, the Vanity Fair gig. None of it feels like tone-deafes. narcissism anymore. It feels like someone who understood the game's true rules and is playing them better than most. Here's what goes on to say, here's what we don't say out loud. There's no money in journalism anymore, no fame, no glamour, no prestige, but there's lots and lots of money in media

and being a brand, an influencer, a personality. We stopped paying journalists and started rewarding performers. Nutsi has read our current media ecosystem. I mean, that's, it's correctly read our current media ecosystem. And he goes on. I mean, there's a lot of, I think, pretty salient stuff. in there. It did read, I mean, and before even reading that piece

and, and thinking about, in those terms, affluence was a weird subtext of a lot of this stuff. One that, that, like,

she's like, like, she, you know, exiled herself from New York, but that means what she drove across the country and somehow now owns a,

like a small house in Los Angeles. In Malibu. Like, oh, in Malibu. Right? Or, I don't know if it said she owned it,

but she certainly is like, possession of one the Ryan Lizapius, which we'll get to, talks about how they like, when they were together, they owned like a, what, three or four story at like Brownstone in D.C. where they would, like, host in Georgetown, not just D.C., but in Georgetown. Right, where it's just like, and I kept saying, where are they getting this money? If you actually go back through a living new to like Wikipedia page, which I finally got to at the end, you see that she was just like producing all of these like TV shows and documentaries and movies before the scandal took place where it's just like, I guess having a good agent can

get you those sort of that sort of access. It's true. She was already sort of playing the game, right? I mean, one just sort of, the anxiety also that it was built into the we got to turn in our book when you're living already at that level of affluence makes me shudder to think how much they were getting paid for that book. Like it must be like we must be talking like a million dollars plus. Which is not crazy. You're in the book trade, right? For the guy who was writing political playbook and Olivia Nutsi, one of the biggest stars in political journalism. It could be significantly more.

but if you're living in a Georgetown, if you're living in a Georgetown Brownstone. I think it was a townhouse for the record, but, but, oh, sorry, townhouse. Sorry, I get those words confused. If you're living in a Georgetown townhouse, what is the dollar figure that makes you shudder? You know, I mean, it's got to be like a million or two million dollars. To have to pay back, you're saying, if you don't get the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah, or like, we really need that, you know, that's, that's, yeah, it's got, it's got, it's got to be freaky, yeah. And how much do you have to pay back, right? So, yeah, how much do you have to pay back, like, presumably a quarter of it? So, yeah.

So what's the dollar figure? $250,000 is probably that dollar figure. It's a lot of money. Yeah. That's, and that was always an interesting part of this. It's like, you do have to pay this money back if you don't turn in a book, right? We always heard that about the Lizzie Nutsi stuff. And that's not nothing, right?

That's a lot of money for most people, even people who are stars of journalism, which they both were. Yeah. And in Nutsi's case, certainly still is. I love the line you quoted from Mediite, because it reminds me of something, which is if I hear somebody in our profession salute someone for, quote, playing this perfectly one more time, I'm going to strangle them. I'm absolutely going to strangle them because you know what you're saying when you deliver that line, you're saying that we exist to be played. We don't. We're

journalists. That's the whole point. That's the whole point. And also, by the way, it seems worth clarifying exactly what Olivia Nutsi did wrong since we're talking about RFK and all this stuff here because I've always said what she did was not a sin against journalism. Journalism isn't real. Journalism's not a thing. It's just what we make of it every single day. Yeah. What she did is she didn't level with her readers.

Well, or her bosses, too. When you said that you weren't sure she was fired from New York Mag, my recollection was that she was or at least that, like, She could have saved her job had she been honest. You know, if she had just from the very beginning been like, yeah, we, you know, it was after I wrote to piece or even if it wasn't, I'm sorry, I should have said if she had just fessed up, but she refused to even like, you know, just do the bare minimum of honesty. Well, the timeline's important here. She writes a profile of RFK Jr. in November of 2023. Mm-hmm. We don't exactly know when the quote-unquote relationship begins, but she just keeps writing from New York.

magazine writes about Trump voters in January 2024s, writing about the Arizona Senate race, writing about Stormy Daniels in May of 24, writing about Michael Cohen, the former Trump associate, that June, writing about the very famous Joe Biden piece that she wrote in July, right before he dropped out of the race, and then writing about visiting Donald Trump at Maralago after the assassination attempt in September of 2024. Yeah. So you're not leveling with readers. if you're not telling them that you're in a relationship with somebody that A, was running for president,

and then B, then became a massive Donald Trump surrogate. Yeah. And the reason I go to that statement, not leveling with readers, is that's something that just can apply across all of journalism. You don't have to make specific rules about, hey, don't take money from sources. Don't be in a business relationship with your sources. Don't fudge a quote. Don't make up a quote. Don't make up scenes.

all that's covered here. Yeah. If you do any of those things, you're not leveling with your readers. If you're Michael Wolf and you're giving Jeffrey Epstein a heads up about a question CNN might ask him, you're not leveling with your readers.

Yeah. If you're an NBA insider, again, on a very different scale, but you're in some strange relationship with agents where information's being traded in a certain way, you're not leveling with your readers. Yep, totally true.

She didn't level with the readers. She didn't. because she knew that if she came out and said, hey, by the way, I'm having a relationship with one of the people that's involved in this whole presidential campaign, everything would have blown up. Yeah.

Nobody would have believed what she was writing. Totally. Like, there would have been asterisk attached to every piece as there now are. Yeah. That's what happened here. Mm-hmm.

You know, you get distracted by all the salaciousness, and trust me, we will. But that's what Olivia Nutsi did wrong. Yeah. it's really as simple as that. And there's a good quote in the Bernstein story by Kara Swisher saying she betrayed the audience. I think that's exactly right.

And by the way, Bernstein also has this from the book that I thought was interesting. She, meaning Nutsi, describes providing him, meaning RFK, with advice about how to manage campaign issues. Yeah. Including the impending news that Kennedy dropped a bear carcass in Central Park. Wait a second. You're helping him massage stories and statements? Yeah. So you're not just not leveling with the audience.

You're not leveling with other reporters who are covering this guy. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, I think that's right. I mean, you have to take your audience seriously, right? I mean, and that's the whole point. What do we do as journalists, if not level with the people we're writing for? Yeah.

Like, what's the other part of the job? Sure. I mean, and look, the crazy thing is that it worked for her. I mean, there's almost an element of fabulousism to it, right? I mean, where it's just, when you talk about not leveling with the readers like is is is getting with you know having it having a permanent relationship with the person that you're covering which inherently leads to a better story you know somehow like significantly different than just sort of like making up the story and no one's going to say that all of the

great fabulous you know Stephen Glass and and and the list goes on weren't great writers they were fantastic writers that's how they were able to get away with it you know and and and it's it's to to withhold that much from your audience is almost like definitionally a lie, right? The whole story becomes fabulous in its ways. They did very different things, but in both cases, they were not giving them the whole story. Well, they're very different things. But I mean, there is a sort of separate argument. I have scribbled down in my notes here.

It's just like, you're right to make this about a question about leveling with the readers. But in terms of like journalism scandals, is a sex scandal? like the best possible one. Right? I mean, it's like you can't like. In terms of marketability? Yeah, in terms of like career perspective too. I mean, it's like, you know, fabulous don't ever work again.

People who just like make shit up don't ever work again. Although, well, I mean, some of them do sure. I mean, and I don't think that, but like that, I mean, could you look, make a serious, make a straight face argument that like Stephen Glass would be a worse West Coast Vanity Fair editor than Olivia Nutsi? I mean, it's, it's. Yeah. Yes, but go ahead.

Just because you made some shit up. Just because you made some shit up doesn't mean you're necessarily a bad editor. Is he going to be like inserting falsehoods and all the stories he'd be assigned? I accept that as an interesting idea, but yes, it's my answer. Okay, fine, fine. You can move on. No, but it's like this is, you're right. I mean, she doesn't level it with the readers.

And yet the career come. I mean, the career is not seemingly been hurt by that at all. You know, I mean, it's, it's she. I think you're right. I think this is because I think what happens is, one, it's, there's a whole, you know, this is a matter of the heart, an affair of the heart, right? I was, I was sucked in. She worked really hard on making that the story in her piece, in the excerpts, you know,

the whole, like, she did, was that the New York Times headline? She did it because out of, for love or whatever, you know, I mean, like, I don't think that an impartial person reading all of the information that is available would lead you to, that being the real organizing principle here, right? That it's, I think that it certainly serves her version of the story for us to be focusing on this singular relationship and how love or lust or unbi-binding passion led her to break some basic journalism rules.

Yeah, and that's why I go back to leveling with the readers because you can't get out of that one, right? You know, it doesn't, it doesn't work. You know, it just, it doesn't work. It doesn't, it doesn't think, you know, one is, one feels like a, okay, yeah, you know, that wasn't a good thing, but I understand, right? Yeah. We all have passions in our lives.

The other one is just more elemental. You didn't tell people about it. Yeah, exactly. You didn't, you didn't tell people. And by the way, in this book, American Canto, I'm going to say this like a clonette every time. Robert Kennedy is referred to only as the politician. I love it.

And I thought Bernstein had a really perceptive line that gets the point you're making. You could argue the referring to Kennedy and other players in the book by monikers like, quote, the politician is literary. It also allows... That's 100% it, yeah. It also allows her to construct a world where everyone is a sketch and proof is beside the point. Mm-hmm. And I think that's interesting, too, right?

It takes it from this, you know, political... journalism plane and puts it up into this literary plane. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if it works, but it's definitely like a droid, you know, like it's definitely like a savvy, it's a savvy move. And it could, it could, you could elevate them. I mean, certainly we can, we can talk about the rebuttal, but there's been a lot of overriding, I think, going on between both of these things, and even a little bit in the New York Times profile. I thought that was pretty much by the book. Yeah, though, when he called her a Hitchcock blonde or said she looked like a Hitchcock blonde, I think that was actually really, that was an app description.

That were people jumped all over that line. I was like, I don't know. That seems right. Before we get on to the Vanity Fair, I do want to just circle back to something you said about covering this whole thing. Yeah. Because it is a trap. Right? On the one hand, it's a legitimate story.

This book is coming out, right? This person is involved with somebody who is a major figure in politics. Well, I mean, you cover journal it. You cover the media world too, right? I mean, it's like this is a bigger media story. Yeah, we're doing this podcast. Like, this is a bigger story than what your media reporters would normally have on their beat.

But yeah, but there is a sort of like, you know, it's like Trump. And she made so much of her fame by covering the Trump, the first Trump administration when everybody in the media was spending all their time saying, how do we cover this appropriately? Like, do, should we be, like, I know that if we air all of Trump's rallies unedited, it will give us more viewers than whatever else we would have on. But is that really an appropriate use of our medium? You know? And that's sort of the question here too.

Like, is this an appropriate use of the, you know, pages or internet pages, web pages that we have to offer? All right. So that's stanza or canto, if you will, number one. Here's number two. Can I just say I'm looking at the Amazon page for American Cantor right now. This has been up the whole time of doing the show. and I've been giggling quietly because of this, just reading the description of the book.

Please. The first line of the jacket copy reads, Olivia Nutsi spent a third of her life observing those in power. It's really a third of her life, an appropriate phrase for someone who is 30 years old. I mean, this is like what you write about somebody who's like, you know, in their 60s or 70s, you spent two thirds of their life,

but a third of her life as if that's some grand, grand expanse of time. Anyway, go on. Yeah, my son has. spent 75% of his life loving Star Wars. Exactly. Seventy-five. Jeez, that's a ton.

Yeah, it's ridiculous. So after the New Year Time Story, we got the Vanity Fair excerpt from the book, which, by the way, comes out the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I'll read you one excerpt. Did you see they actually delayed the book three weeks so it wouldn't conflict? That wasn't that Times piece, right? So that it wouldn't come out at the same time as Cheryl Hines memoir. And we played the audio the other day of Cheryl Hines on Stephen Miller's wife's podcast.

Yeah. Talking about her and not naming her. Similar to Nutsi calling Kennedy the politician, which is talking to, you know, sub-tweeting. I mean, just, God, that's another level that will be addressed on a different Ringer podcast at ours, perhaps. I could, I could quote you any paragraph from the story, but I'm going to pick this one. Okay. Nutsi has been writing about threats to Kennedys or the politician's life. And she writes this, I did not like to think about it, just as I,

later would not like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny. I loved his brain. I hated the idea of an intruder therein. Others thought he was a madman. He was not quite mad the way they thought, but I love the private ways that he was mad. I love that he was insatiable in all ways as if he could swallow up the whole world just to know it better if he could. He made me laugh, but I winced when he joked about the worm. Baby don't worry, he said, it's not a worm. Yeah. What do you want me to say about that? Well, I was first introduced, I was first introduced by this phrase because our wonderful

co-worker Katie Baker dropped it into media slack at the ringer slack. And I just read it and it was unattributed and I was just like, what am I reading right now? And I was just like went over it time and time again before I actually dropped it into Google and figured out what was going on. I mean, it was, yeah, just incredible, incredible work there. This is not journalism. This is literature. Ryan. This is really a literature conversation.

And here's a related question. An indelicate question. You've read this now. Is this good writing? I don't think it's really answerable. It is familiar writing. I think, okay, I sort of feel like this is a two-tiered question. There are a lot of people arguing about this on Twitter. Also, the Ryan Lizzie piece as well.

Our old co-worker Jay Kang was getting into it by defending the writing style or at least like the conceptual framework of it. Of Ryan's piece? Yeah. Because Ryan's piece was very purple too, or at least very just sort of like faux something, faux, you know, like faux philosophical. Yeah, so it was a quote from Buddha. I mean, all these people are on a journey.

Yes. A distinct journey, but they're all on a journey. Yeah, but is it good, okay, I think it's it. So basically to me, it's a two-tiered question. Let me, again, I'll digress. Is this good writing? I don't, I don't really accept the, the, premise because like people just talk about bad writing as if it's a knowable quantity and it's

not and people like anytime there's a show they don't like or whatever it's just like oh bad writing is and that's like a full answer and it's not it's not a full answer so is it good writing in the sense that it's like passable better than like you know then then uh like newswire writing yes yes it is in it like it is definitely like it is definitely put that on the jacket it's better than stuff you see on the AP wire is it is this something that would like a that could like passably appear at the, like, the most prestigious, like, MFA programs in the country. Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Like, this is in the... Now we're talking. Now we're getting on the jacket. Please continue. But is it successful at what it attempts, I think is the bigger question. Because if we set aside the idiocy of, like, whether or not this is good writing, it's just like, yeah, it's just like, yeah, it's just like, yeah, it's just like, yeah, it's just like, yeah, it's just like, yeah, it's just like, yeah, it's okay. let's get let's let me figure out how I can fix this is it successful at what an attempts well I think that it's hard to tell without reading the whole book but just in terms of like

the vanity fair profile I would say like I would say like it's not very successful at like fulfilling what the assumed audience would want but it may then be it may be successful at reframing herself as a character that is interesting in a different way than she was interesting before I do think that like and again from the careerist aspect of it. I do think there is a huge number of people in positions of power that will read just a vanity fair excerpt of this and be like, oh, Olivia Nutsi is like, it is a more brilliant person than I realized, right? I think it tries to convey a thing, but I don't think it functionally conveys it in any sort of like honest way. But I'm not sure that's like, did that matter? Can I say,

positions of power? Are you talking media? Are you talking potentially like Hollywood positions of power? Both, both. I mean, I think, I think that... Doesn't this feel like we're all on the ramp up as long as we're talking about the rollout here into the movie of Olivia Nutsi? Yes, absolutely. Like, that's a thing that's going to have... I don't mean this to... I don't mean this to attack anybody, but you and I have both known many people in positions

of power in journalism and in media and in Hollywood and everything else. Well, yeah. I don't know that they're... Like, I think that this excerpt would be considered. like high level stuff to the majority of those people. Now, if you want to ask me as like a literary critic as someone with an MFA of my own,

I can wave around if you want. Hell yeah. I would say like, no, this is not like, like, why? Like, what are we doing here? I like the politician thing. I like the literary devices thing. I like getting purply. I like, I like if it's,

if the point is I want you to, that this book should like reflect an archetype or a style of something else. There's a lot of weird. It's weird there's been a lot of Jimmy Breslin references in pieces about her. Just because she was just sort of this, but this is like the least Jimmy Breslin thing. You could ever possibly, right? That was not a name I would have pulled out of the air.

I think it's just because it was a sort of, you know, she was just sort of a norms bust, like bursting, sort of, you know, like whatever. Like get in there with your sources. I don't know. She was reading Jimmy Breslin, I guess, when she was working on the Anthony Wiener. campaign, which is his own separate thing. But yeah, I mean, if the point is to just sort of evoke a certain style or sensibility or like period of the past, like, I get it, I like it. I just didn't like this piece.

I just didn't like this excerpt on its own very much, you know, beyond the first several sentences of like, oh, this is a thing. And then, you know, what's the point here? Well, there's a lot going on here. And I agree with you that the excerpt might not be the book itself. And I am 1,000% planning on reading this book. I believe Joel's planning on reading this book when we come back from Thanksgiving. So we will have a full report on the book and I will certainly give it a chance as a book.

In the excerpt, the stuff she's writing about is not only the politician, who she's now far away from and is kind of observing from the West Coast, but also the series of wildfires that are happening at the same time. Yeah. And I don't know about you, but when I was reading the passages about the wildfires, I started thinking of the thin red line and the Terence Malick narration that the grunts in that movie were delivering. If I may, David, I worry about evil. If it is a force, if it is like the Santa Ana wins, if it may come on suddenly, if it may grab hold, if it may depart, but not completely. If it may leave word, if the word might sound good. If I might again believe it, the snake charmer, the man-eater, the devil himself, was it ever a question that where there was a cloak, there would be a dagger?

Apologies if that sounded like Wright Thompson was starting in the thin red line, but that's really the best I could do. Yeah. You read a passage like that, and I'm with you. purple is exactly the shade you want to color in. And I read that and I'm not like, okay, but dude, then she gets to a great trademark Olivia Nutsi thought like this. A politician's greatest trick is to convince you that he is not one. And what is a politician? Any man who wants to be loved more than other men and through this pursuit reveals why he cannot love himself.

I'd read a line like that. And I go, whoa. That's good. Yeah. To your point about positioning. There's definitely a lot of positioning here. This is just the beginning of it, too. The positioning is, I am a symptom of this thing that has happened to America. Mm-hmm. And because of that, I'm not disqualified from writing this book.

I'm actually the best person to write. The best person for it, yeah. That's what it is, right? Bernstein notes that she wrote a lot of this while hiking. She wrote it on her phone. Have you ever tried that? Just the audio, just a recorder or talking to your iPhone style writing? I've done it before and then I always forget that I did it or I never go back to the actual file.

Yeah, so weird. Same thing. It's brutal to write down unless you have someone who's type, your typist. If you have someone transcribing it, then maybe that could work. And there are certainly times even in this, like even in the line that you just quoted, which I thought was kind of two great insight samuiting. which together that could and there could have been a lot more space given to. Sure.

Like the second, like the second half, you could have let me breathe between part one and part two and what is a politician? It feels a little bit like it was just like transcribed straight from from a monologue or something. You know, like it like it, but anyway, yes. What were we talking about her recording? What were you going to say? Well, she was punching it in on her phone. But we were saying that she's positioning herself as the perfect person to write this.

Oh, yeah. There's a lot of, I mean, and let's not, let's say nothing of the fact that, like, there's a lot of space in all of this discussion given to, like, her work on the Trump administration, which is not insignificant. I mean, she got some great, you know, exclusives and told some big stories and certainly, like, played a big role in that period of, you know, American journalism. But, like, the more that we talk about Trump, the less we're really talking about her and the more that the story is being framed as a thing. that she is necessary to, you know, it's like you have to put it in terms of that. And the not leveling with the reader occurred much, much later than like the first Trump administration, right? It's not, this is not, the story that we're telling now is not really about Trump administration,

like the first four years of Trump. And except for, I mean, you could, if you, if you were writing this story, the first four years of Trump would be a quick preamble or an aside. Maybe you'd go into her, like, entering Corey Lewandowski's townhouse or whatever. And, like, that's an interesting piece or whatever. But, like, I think that was in the first four years. I could have that timeline wrong. No, I think it was after, actually.

But it regardless, I don't think you would spend that much time on it. So anyway, making, it does. She is. And in some ways, all because of that, she is the sort of perfect person to tell us very specific version of this story. But then I think we go back to, like, is this a story that needs to be written, published, read? I'm not quite sure about it. Yeah. I mean, look, this is the case for American Cato, is that our world, political and...

Can we just use the Olivia Nutsi contrivance, and instead of repeating the name of it, we just say the book or the manuscript? Okay, thank you. This is the case for the forthcoming book. That our world, David, politically and otherwise, is so screwy that it needs this kind of literary journalistic treatment. to go along with the conventional journalistic treatment. And that Nutsi, everything else aside, is the person that can take us there. Sure. That is also the before times case for Olivia Nutsi, by the way, for all those pieces in New York Magazine.

They didn't did that the Trump administration was something that just again, not to belittle anybody who's writing newspaper articles about this, but it needed and deserved that kind of treatment. it required something different. Yes. And again, I'm not talking about what she did, but I'm just talking about how she wrote, right? Yeah. That you could get to this truth by writing in those kind of terms. I think that there's an argument that is, I think that there's an argument that it's sort of inextricable.

And it's probably not a popular thing to say inside of journalism. And maybe that's where you get to Breslin or where you get to, you know, some of the great. Joan Didion or other people, right? I think that's more of the comp, at least what she's going for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Joan Didion is a great comp here. Is that like there's a certain level of literary. And again, this is why she framed her own book this way.

There's a certain level of nonfiction literature where you stop questioning the how because the product is so profound. Right? It's like when people get into, like I understand how it's important to like not write a fictional, like a totally fictional like the James Fry thing. Like you don't write like a piece of fiction and say this is a memoir, right? But there are certain pieces of like, quote, literary nonfiction where we don't question the, the absolute veracity of things. And we don't question the how.

Well, I think that that's certainly what she's going for. And that's why it's important, I guess, to talk about whether or not it succeeds. Because if it doesn't succeed, then this is not, this is neither journalism nor profound. and in which case it's a failure. When you were outlining that certain kind of book, the first title that leapt into my head was Hillbilly Elegy. Oh, yeah. The vice president of the United States.

I'd be, dude. Yes. I mean, I remember watching J.D. Vance on freaking Meet the Press, you know, like selling this book. That's, you know, I think that there was less attention given to the veracity of that one. the time but i think that again from a literary perspective you could make the case it was profound it was necessary what it was like implying was a was a deeper truth you know um but yeah when we

saw where that went olivian utzi future vice president is that where you think this is headed what weirder things have happened i'll put it that way yeah david this brings us to the third stanza slash conto of our story last night is some of of us were enjoying the Dallas Cowboys playing as if they were a real football team for once, we suddenly got a barrage of texts. God, did we? About Ryan Lizza's substack post. Mm-hmm.

Ryan Lizza, former New Republic, New Yorker and Politico writer, wrote on his substack, which is called Talos. That is... Did you check the pronunciation of that one? I didn't, but I think it's Talos. I just assumed it was telos, or telos, but go on. Telos. Telos, did I say?

Telos. Let's go with Telos. It's Greek meaning ultimate end. Mm-hmm. I'm not sure it's a true only in journalism term, but I did note that our friend Vincent Cunningham had once used that term to describe Steph Curry's three-point shooting in the New Yorker. Oh, really? Sorry, Vincent, I had to put that out there.

So we're reading this, and I'm like, oh, right. We've been so consumed in the story that it's easy to. forget that there is another party to this. Another major political journalist whose career was affected by this. Yeah. And Ryan Lizza, it turns out, has nature metaphors too.

He's writing about that bamboo that invaded he and Nutsi's courtyard garden in Washington. Sure. I mentioned he quoted Buddha. And he has written a piece, which is called Part 1, part one, David.

How I found out. Yeah. He writes that he and Nutsi were living together. They were writing a book about the 2020 presidential campaign. Hold on to that thought for a second. And Liza found Kempton Hotel Stationery. Now, anybody who covers politics for a living, I guarantee you their first thought when they read that sentence was, oh,

Kempton Hotel. That's where I accumulate IHG points rather than Marriott points. This is how people in our profession think. Lizza says Nutsi had been away writing about a long shot presidential candidate. I'll quote here

from his story. If I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house, Olivia had written, this is on the stationary, I would still thirst for you. Unfortunately, Lizza notes, the lack of water tower on our Georgetown home's roof ruled me out as the notes intended recipient.

I flipped to another page and saw a name and the first line of an unfinished love letter to him that included enough details to confirm a physical relationship and the hint of some kind of falling out. My heart stopped when I realized who it was. He was a famous politician, 32 years older than Olivia, and well known for a sex scandal. But more importantly, he was a presidential candidate of a source and the subject of Olivia's recent profile for for New York. I don't know about you, but I'm reading this and I'm like, is he doing the literary device of the politician?

Just like Nutsi's doing in our own book. Are we under some weird, you know, agreement legal or otherwise where we cannot just name the person we all know that we're talking about? Yeah. Then the big reveal. Lizzie continues. I called my agent. We have a problem.

A big problem. I said. Olivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford. Mark Sanford, if your political scandal knowledge is not your best attribute, was the former governor of South Carolina, once upon a time vanished for a week, said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. But during that time, he was actually visiting his mistress. There was a time, a more innocent time, David, in our politics where hiking the Appalachian Trail was. a joke. Yeah.

Oh, it's a good one. It's a great metaphor. So what Liz is saying is that that alleged act blew up their 2020 presidential campaign book. And it was so funny

because I got to thinking that Olivia was on this podcast, the press box, in April 2020. And I remember the day she was on it very, very well because, one, I had been at the NFL network with my microphone because they were

having broadcast boot camp that day. Oh, yeah. And two, OJ had died that day. And the ringer was like, hey, can we get a column about OJ? And the three, on the very same day, I was also interviewing Olivia Nudse. And I remember as I was jotting down questions, I went and looked at the Amazon listing for the Nutsi Liza book. And I was like, yeah, what happened to that? Why did that keep getting pushed back and somehow I never got around to asking her. Conversation went a different way. I'm sure the answer would not have involved Kempton Hotel Stationery, but

anyway, just made me think that. So that's part of the Lizza excerpt. Yeah. You want some more? Sure. She deceived me for a year and smeared me with false allegations and not just little lies, but big fantastical falsehoods, blackmail. Former child actor, Olivia, always had a keen sense with a dramatic she orchestrated a plot with the help of a senior Trump official to try to have me imprisoned

and now she's written what appears to be a largely fictitious and self- I want to know more about the imprisonment. Well, that's for part two. We don't give it away on Substack in part one. Yeah. So there's a lot here. I mean, listen, the, he pledges not to write in anger, right, throughout whatever this series is going to be, and that would be a very interesting feat.

if he accomplishes that. Obviously, there's a lot of information that it's unfortunately in the, you know, realm of unknowable, presumably about how their relationship fell apart and especially what happened in the aftermath of it. The accusations that Nutsi made in D.C. Superior Court that resulted in, what was it? He wasn't, it was a non-contact. She tried to, she filed for a protective order. Protective order.

This is, according to Bernstein, then ultimately dropped the order, saying in her motion to dismiss and, et cetera, et cetera. She also accused him of being the one that leaked the story about her relationship with RFK Jr. I mean, that, I guess, is probably, you know, more plausible than some of the stuff than the protective order.

I mean, it seems like to worry the important thing of the protective order, which he dropped and didn't, and refused to substantiate when being profiled by the New York Times was that it just sort of froze everything. and everything for a while, right? That there would be, that none of the information that's coming out now

would be coming out, you know, in that moment. Froze it while creating a separate spectacle of the whole legal proceedings. Exactly. So, yeah, I mean, a lot of that stuff,

I think is kind of ultimately unknowable and you have to go or will prove to be unknowable. I mean, I'm sure that Lizzie will clue us in a lot of the stuff and there will be more information about it in the forthcoming book

when it comes out, but I don't think there will be any sort of like, you know, decisive decision of what's true and what's not. You have to decide for yourself. And by the way, I don't know that it's totally clear that Liz is a part of this book at all, you know, except or, you know, maybe mostly in absentia. It would be better for Olivia Nutsi to write this book and not and have him not be a part of the story, you know, aside from this sort of bad offhanded and could dot, dot, dot,

and that ended my long-term relationship, you know. So, yeah, I mean, so it will be interesting to see how much of that story she does she opt to tell. Because then, again, at the end of the day, that's, that is actually, that's the more interesting piece, right? Maybe it doesn't, maybe, maybe Ryan Liz's portion of it. I mean, it doesn't, you know, ring through the halls of power or, you know, just as much as the RFK stuff does. And yet, for those of us that are terminally online and obsessing over the Twitter details, like this is the part that we care. Yes, I think, I think more interesting for journalists is, is an interesting way.

to put it. He's not an unimportant person himself, right? He's a big, he's incredibly significant. Absolutely. And he gets into some stuff about his career, which we can maybe talk about after part two. The other thing we need to bring up that the New Yorker stuff. Also in this excerpt, though, is there's a whole Keith Olberman section. Oh, God, I totally forgot about that. Nutsi had been living with Keith Olberman and honest. And he's, you know, Liz is writing that he, that he, Lizza, helped her extricate herself from that relationship

or untangle herself from an unusual relationship. Man, that was just... I believe the New York, the New York poster, one of the tabloids I was reading the day referred to him as her sugar daddy, yes.

Oh my God. You remember when we saw him when we were really young? Did we see Keith? I can never, I can never get this out of my head, but... No, no, no.

I, whenever I have not in person and maybe that's why, But back in our early 20s, we saw Keith in a cartoonish trench coat on a rainy day, like a rainy Saturday in New York. And I don't remember if it was like, it was either the Lower East Side or Soho. It was definitely Soho. It was right on the, it was on spring and whatever that last street before Delancey is, right where there is that like that brunch spot. I remember seeing him under the scaffolding or whatever, like, clearly, like, waiting for a woman in, like, a cartoonish P.I. Trenchcote.

Or maybe it was colder. You don't think. I'm trying. I would try to do the timeline, and then I gave up because I was like, this is not healthy, nor particularly interesting, whichever person it was that he was there to meet. I mean, I say skulking. The dude's, like, six, six. Like, he's the one of the hardest.

He's one of the hardest people. Only, it would take a hell of a trench coat to hide that, to disguise him. But anyway, yeah. I'm going to choose to remember Keith for his work on SportsC and countdown over on MSNBC. You can accuse me of whatever nuky-like evasions you want, but that's how all was. He was reporting. He was tweeting about this last night. He was.

Dude, there's just so much. I cannot tell you. I mean, it feels like we just did 55 minutes on that. And in a lot of ways, we've only scratched the surface. It's totally true. Still coming out. There's more potential. more parts of Ryan Liz's reveal.

And by the way, another interesting, just part of the Lizzie thing is not only is he doing, here's my story, just while you're all, while you guys are all waiting for her story, here's my story, here's my part of this whole thing. But in a way,

she's got a book that's already between hard covers. It's shipped. He's got a substagic. She can't change what's in the book. You know, write whenever he wants, right? He can keep coming out with him. This is the real power of the subsist.

stack generation. It occurred to me when I was doing this. I mean, I like Liz as a writer. I'd never read his substack before this piece. He seems, he appears to be doing well by it. At least he seems to want to convey that. It's, it's all, it's very odd. I have a couple of questions. One, please. I know we have a lot of New Yorker conversations that are on the horizon, but did you like the aside of Olivia Nutsi following David Remnick around a cocktail party and screaming you're a coward at him in defense of her than boyfriend or fiance? That's unbelievable. Well, that's one of my favorite things.

Two, was there a West Coast, just a point of order? Was there a Vanity Fair West Coast editor before, prior to Olivia Nudzi? Or was this a position that was functionally created for her? I don't know the answer to that. I suspect that... Because I don't see replacing very much. It could be one that you've used on and off over the years. I think the thing to know is that the way she will inhabit the job is a new way that the job exists.

I was just going to say because her role in Newark Magazine when she kind of got on most people's radars for the first time as the Washington correspondent was a role that had not existed prior to her having it. So it's just sort of an interesting framework that she's just sort of she's a job creator, Ryan. Like wherever she goes, they're like, let us conceptualize something new for you because you don't fit in the constructs of what we currently have. I mean, that's, that's again, all the power comes from that, right? That is part of all this. that she is. And I always thought like if there was another act, I don't think second act is the right word,

but her covering Hollywood would make a ton of sense. Sure. Yeah. Because you don't have her covering politics, but you have her going and covering Hollywood, writing those kind of features about Hollywood people, and nobody in Hollywood's going to care.

No one's going to be like, oh, actually I read this thing. No one. But does Vanity Fair not have to care twice as much to people that publishes you have to care twice as much because it's almost like, you know, you're sending the, it's not a fox and henhouse thing. I don't want to use whatever metaphor actually popped into my head. But like it puts her in a lot of problematic places too. I mean, in terms of like extreme. You wanted her. Now, again, is she really going to be mostly an editor or person like I, it's hard for me to believe that they

would hire her and not want her to write. No, no, I think, I think, listen, totally, totally, yes, she's not there to be a literal editor. That's definitely true. Can I ask you another question? Please. And maybe this is certainly an answerable. Don't answer it. I think when I think of the affair, the new, potentially the the, the numerous affairs with subjects. The relationships.

Sorry. Yes. Relationships with the people that you're writing about and how that's problematic on a journal, journalistic level. I think that where my head initially goes to, I think probably where most people's mind initially goes to is it affects your coverage of them generally like, which one would say it probably would lead you to cover them in a better light than maybe you would otherwise because you were romantically involved with them. There's a second piece that occurred to me only

kind of as we're having this conversation, which I wonder how much of it is a piece that it's actually works the other way, that it's almost like there's like a, almost like a mutually assured destruction element to this whole thing where it's like, you know, you can actually write whatever you want. And even in the, in a sense, write things that aren't true. because you know that the subject will never come out and never say anything about the way you've covered them, or else it will open up them to the story of the relationship coming out. Like there is a, it's not inherently like a power imbalance. Like there's a lot of things that could go towards it affecting the way that you write a piece.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. And I think there may be something to that. It's also just like thinking of this in the context of Trump world where there is no such thing as a scandal anymore, or at least like a career ending scandal. is an it's an interesting way to think about that, right? Like, we're just like, everything's, everything's kind of public or eventually becomes public

and things that would have, you know, caused people to slink away in shame, you know, actually cause them to be president or, you know, I mean, that's like, I don't know, so I don't, I don't forget that.

She had that incredible exclusive interview with Trump in the Oval office that is just sort of a, just mentioned in passing in all these stories. And I am not, but hear me say this, and not implying that she had a relationship with President Trump. But I don't know.

I mean, like, listen, when you're not leveling with your reader, and I think you're right, that's what this all comes down to. Like, you're not leveling with your reader about the content of the stories because of all this stuff. Well, I mean, there are elements of not leveling that could lead to a situation, like, getting that interview, you know, that, and I'm not just, I mean, and there's even as basic as, like, sort of predetermined terms or, you know, sort of a negotiation that goes on.

The whole thing is called into question. Sure. I mean, and that's, look, when somebody, when something like this happens, you start to look over, you just start to think about everything anew. You know, you start to look at things that seem journalistically miraculous. And you squint at them. Yes. And whether there's anything there or not, you know, Donald Trump's invited plenty of

of people into the Oval Office and given tons of interviews, even with people that he perceives that, you know, will not be, quote, nice to him. So I don't know. But again, you just squint at things. a different way. Yeah. All right. Coming up in 30 seconds, other news about the media world.

But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrated gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees, David, to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. A big NFL news this last week. The New York Giants fired head coach Brian Dable and elevated into that position, Mike Kafka. As you can imagine, there were a lot of Kafka jokes. One example, quoting here, one morning when Mike Kafka woke from troubled dreams,

he found himself transformed in his bed into the coach of the New York Giants. Thank you to Stephen Roderick for that. If you merge the overworked Twitter joke with our sliding doors metaphors feature, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Have you read the metamorphosis? be honest. Yeah, of course.

I went through a big Kafka phase, yeah. Are you leveling with me right now? Like B. Traver and Kafka? You must have seen me carrying. It just doesn't sound like you. Yeah, you know. I say that as a compliment. You know, just weren't that kind of guy.

What else we got here? I don't even think I have the energy to do Michael Wolf on Substack. We'd get to that next week or on Thursday. No. I did work at Henry Holt when his first. What was this first Trump book called? What and What? Fire and Fury.

Fire and Fury. I was there when that came out. I mean, I don't think there's any particular stories. Well, I'm not going to go out there with any particular stories or whatever, but that's a great. What are you hiding from us? No, but I can say, I guess the question of whether or not that was good journalism was probably not asked at the time. Yeah, I mean, I bet it was asked, but I bet it was asked more loudly later on. But I think.

I think it's only really being asked recently. I mean, I think it's the Epstein emails, I think, are doing more to sort of open that conversation up than a lot of other stuff. Well, it actually dovetails what I'm going to talk about next, which is strange new respect for Marjorie Taylor Green. Oh, yeah. And Marjorie Taylor Green's embrace, if only a partial embrace from the resistance. Mm-hmm. Right? Because it's just like you say about Michael Wolf.

Hey, you're doing what we like, right? You're doing that thing. You're opposing Donald Trump. Mm-hmm. telling us something embarrassing about Donald Trump. So you're good. You're cool. You're with us.

If you don't know the concept of strange new respect, Jack Schaefer wants to find it like this. The American spectators Tom Bethel introduced the concept in a 1992 article to ridicule the practice of liberal journalists who would reward conservative politicians who migrated from right to left by commenting in print on how they were now commanding, quote, strange new respect in Washington showing, quote, growth, maturity, wisdom and thoughtfulness.

So what does Marjorie Taylor Green done? Well, she's demanded the release of the Epstein files. She has talked about how Donald Trump has betrayed his America First Agenda with his new interest in foreign policy. Yeah. And bringing the new Syrian president to the White House where he was spraying him with some kind of fragrance. Trump, in turn, has called her a traitor.

Well, and come out anomaly in favor of extending the health care subsidies. That's right. That's right. Brian Glenn, remember Brian Glenn? Uh-huh. A multi-time winner of the worst question ever asked to the White House. Mm-hmm. He came out on Twitter three days ago and said, I love this woman, I love this country.

God bless America. And then it showed him posing with his girlfriend, Marjorie Taylor Green. Yeah, I was going to say they're in a relationship, right? I should have probably put that first. And then he went back to tweeting nice stuff about Trump. Yeah. Brian Glenn doesn't want to get in the middle of all this. I don't think you have to worry about getting in the middle of it.

I mean, I think there's a way where it's like if you're not like, if you say enough stuff, nice stuff about Trump, it just sort of that, that the issue isn't like ideology. It's staying on Trump's good side for most of these people, right? So it's like enough nice tweets about Trump. If it keeps you on his good side, it kind of doesn't matter what you say in the other ones, right? Yeah, everything that you said about Marjorie Taylor Green and newfounders respect is totally true. I mean, it felt like there was a period where that was like 50% of the MSNBC. now known as MS now. Line up was like these sort of former Trumpers

that like, or former, you know, ex-Republicans that have like, you know, that have left because of Trump, the bill crystal of the world, you know, whatever,

it's like, oh, God, we've been waiting for an excuse to have you on, you know, and now ideologically you're in line. I do think there's something subtly different going on

with Marjorie Taylor Green, and I mentioned the healthcare subsidies for a reason, which is to say, I think she's like addressing people, if not all in pieces of,

reality for the first time. And that's more profound than the ideological lineup. Now, certainly there are liberals who are happy to see her, like, come down on their side just for vote-getting purposes, you know, for caucusing purposes. But, like, I think it, like, one of the most infuriating things is that we see in modern politics, it seems like people are just, especially on one side coming out of the Trump White House, they're just sort of blind to reality in so many ways. And that she could buck the, you know, the mainstream of her party just by pointing

out a thing that anybody can see with their own two eyes, I think allows, affords her some legitimate newfound respect, you know, it's just like, it's not just that like the, you know, for some of these people that the Epstein tapes or the Epstein files need to be released because of the deeper implications. It's like, no, we promised our voters that we would release these. And that's why we, that's why I'm going to continue to say, let's release them, you know, like this is just a statement of fact. And again, the healthcare subsidy stuff, she was just like, oh wait this is weird i actually just like like actually asked somebody about it you know my brother-in-law or whatever and like it turns out it's going to really negatively affect their lifestyle you know

like that's that's pretty significant and it's crazy to say that's pretty significant in modern politics yes and i will add one additional dimension here which is when you talk about her addressing reality we're not just moving from you know trumpy reality to actual reality we're moving from space lasers to actual reality Right? With her, that's a, that's a lot of ground to cover. It's, it's, it's, yes, it is. And that only enhances the strange new respect at the end of the day. And she did actually think, by the way, one, sorry.

And not for nothing. I think she did like, did she openly apologize for being part of the problem in terms of attacking people on Twitter that she said Charlie Kirk's death is like gone on to, has really affected this and she's committed herself to it. No. That's fine. It's fine. A really good question from CNN's Dan Appash, by the way.

Yeah. It was like, you're talking. about how people are treated, but you never seem to be too worried about this before Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Green straight up apologized. Like it wasn't just, listen, a lot of people would apologize or would say that like, that would use

Charlie Kirk's death in a sort of fun house mirror like inverted way to attack their opponents, right? I think after Charlie Kirk's death, you guys should shut up. You know, like you guys should use, should take the lesson that we should all take from this. But no, she was just pretty much like, no, it's like I was part of the problem.

We've got a few only in journalism words before we go for new listeners. These are words you read all the time in news articles, but never hear in human speech. Dan DeGiorgio points us to those Epstein files, those Epstein emails, and talks about Republicans releasing a tranche of messages. I love the word tranch. If you had just said tranche, I would not have like, I would not have called it into question. Like, that's how you know it's an only in journalism word, like, the pronunciation, you know, who knows? Would you have also accepted cash

of emails? Sure. Cash or tranch, trunch. Tom Bonin, David, another alert listener writes, love the only in journalism segment. I have a good one that I recall having encountered more than once in the New Yorker

postlapsarian. Postlapsarian. Is that an SAT word or is that better? Is that too hard even for the SAT? So David and I were in the same SAT training courses together. I absolutely remember prelapsearian. Oh, that's what I'm thinking of, yes.

But did we ever get to postlapsarian? I'm not sure. No, prelapsearian, I think probably was the end. Before the fall, but we didn't get to after the fall. Postlapsarian is just after the fall? Yeah. Yeah, Nick Palmgarten writing on the Grateful Dead in the New Yorker. Most of the band's lifespan was postlapsarian.

All right, great. So we have Telos and. And post-lapsarian is only in New Yorker words. This comes from Nick Gill. We were talking the other day about Cash Patel, referring to his girlfriend as a country music sensation or country music superstar. Nick writes, I think the slightly odd title most often given to singers from non-country genres who are performing the national anthem at sporting events is recording artist or international

recording artist. You hear that a lot on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade too? Just the sort of ways that you describe people that are like, they're kind of famous, but they're still unfamous enough to be doing the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. And like, you know, in your living room maybe one out of four people, knows who that, knows who this is. Yeah, that's an interesting one.

Yeah, and it just means like your music has been recorded. You were not just a busker. It implies you're under contract to like a major label, sort of, yeah. Yeah, please rise while internationally renowned recording artist. Yeah. David Shoemaker sings. All right, it's time for a feature that is always internationally renowned. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses, the strain pun headline.

Yeah. Last Monday's headline about Sidney's turn as a boxer was Play Christy for me. I really botched that one. All right, let's go. Today's headline comes to us from Eugene Rooney, David. It's from the Albuquerque Journal. Uh-huh. The journal's first appearance in this feature.

After nearly a year's worth of renovations, the duck pond at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque is reopening. Mm-hmm. But as a journal reporter Noah Alcala Bach notes, no ducks were present for the reopening of their namesake pond. I think that's all you need. What was the Albuquerque journals? No ducs. headline. Oh,

you're like, I like what you started. Oh, just no ducks. No ducks, no glory. No ducks, no ducks.

So close. Something that rhymes with ducks, if you think of the phrase here, no ducks. No. Oh, no ducks given. No ducks given.

Thank you very much, sir. Good job. Albuquerque. That's a good one. He is David Schumaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Produce of Magic by Bruce Baldwin. coming up Thursday. Joel Anderson will be here along with a special guest. And next Monday,

Shoemaker, you and I are going to tee it up right before Thanksgiving. And I will have an interview that I recorded a couple of days ago with the great Susan Orlean. I cannot tell you how much I love Susan Orlean's writing. She's so good. One of her books has a permanent place on the shelf behind me because when I forget how to write, there's two or three books. I'm sure you have them too that you just reach for and be like, open it up. Ah, here is how to write. Now I can go on with my labor. American canto. Yeah, that's well. That's soon to be added to the list. Susan and I got into writing and reporting. We got into Tina Brown and how she ran the New Yorker. We got into adaptation. I also picked my three

favorite Susan Orleans stories, including the one that became the movie Blue Crush. I will tweet those out over the next couple of days in case you want to read them before I talked to her because I asked her all about those stories. That's coming up next. Monday and then we got some special things cooking up for Thanksgiving week and beyond sir that we'll announce next Monday. Plus, of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Ryan.