Ryan Lizza on Olivia Nuzzi, RFK Jr, and the economics of modern media

Summary

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Mixed Signals from Semafor Media

Episode: Ryan Lizza on Olivia Nuzzi, RFK Jr, and the economics of modern media
Date: January 9, 2026
Guests: Ryan Lizza (Telos), Hosts Max Tani & Ben Smith

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the media firestorm surrounding Ryan Lizza’s explosive Substack series about his breakup with Olivia Nuzzi—his ex-fiancée and fellow political journalist—her subsequent relationship with RFK Jr., and the intertwined fallout in both media and politics. Max Tani and Ben Smith interrogate Lizza’s motives, the ethics of personal journalism, and what the saga reveals about the state of modern media economics, accountability, and narrative control.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Backstory: Scandal, Substack, and the Media Ecosystem

• Who is Ryan Lizza?

  • Longstanding political reporter, formerly with The New Republic, The New Yorker, Politico, CNN, now running his Substack, Telos.
  • Engaged to journalist Olivia Nuzzi, whose alleged relationship with RFK Jr. while still with Lizza became a public story.
  • After Nuzzi’s book and media tour, Lizza published his own eight-part, 25,000-word account on Substack.
  • The story touches on claims of journalistic misconduct, political maneuvering, and media complicity.

• Why Tell the Story in This Way?

  • Lizza’s initial attempts to correct the record through traditional media and Politico didn’t materialize.
  • He describes his frustration at media outlets running with Nuzzi’s version without, in his view, sufficient scrutiny or fact-checking.

“I realized that the only way to do it…was I had to finally tell it myself.” – Ryan Lizza [07:05]

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2. Motive and Method: Fighting Back with Narrative

• Catalyst for Publishing:
  • Lizza’s conversation with Jacob Bernstein at The New York Times—who was, in his words, about to run a “puffy piece” on Nuzzi—galvanized him.
  • He felt mainstream outlets ignored key facts and that correcting the record required full narrative control.

“I said, ‘Jacob, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the book is false, too. But more importantly, there are just sins of omission that you’re going to be very embarrassed by…’” – Ryan Lizza [06:28]

• On Fighting Fire with Fire:
  • Instead of a simple statement, Lizza opted for personal, journalistic storytelling—matching Nuzzi’s approach, but from his perspective.
  • Describes conflicting impulses: wanting the story to go away versus the duty to correct serious personal and professional accusations.

“The choice…was between letting a book that attacked me with false and defamatory claims go unresponded to…or respond in full, finally, to a series of extremely serious accusations that if you Google my name, will live with me, you know, for the rest of my life.” – Ryan Lizza [15:07]

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3. Media, Ethics, and Institutional Accountability

• Why Not Publish Earlier?
  • Lizza points to legal entanglements, institutional reluctance (especially at Politico), and personal risk.
  • Attributes Politico’s disinterest to their post-2016 editorial calculus: “sucking up to the Trump administration” and wishing to avoid a messy internal story.

“They missed one of the great scoops of the moment…that’s on Politico.” – Ryan Lizza [09:42]

• Failed Media Due Diligence:
  • Criticizes Simon & Schuster, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair for not investigating further after he alerted them to issues with Nuzzi’s narrative.
  • Describes sending memos to editors outlining key questions and evidence.

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4. Personal Fallout and Narrative Control

• Impact on Lizza’s Life and Work:
  • Legal costs ($127,000), personal strain, polarized reactions from friends and loved ones.
  • Substack revenue offset some—but not all—of the costs and reputational damage.

“Olivia left me with a $127,000 legal bill…There’s nothing that can compensate me for the damage that her recklessness did.” – Ryan Lizza [22:18]

• Substack and the Economics of Media:
  • Notes the contrast with legacy publishing: “There is still that sense that somehow writing something in a book or a magazine is different than doing it on Substack or a podcast. And that is not the world that we live in anymore.” [23:45]
  • Finds the attention overwhelming and wonders how to pivot back to traditional reporting.

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5. The ‘Real Story’—RFK Jr., Media Corrections, and Journalistic Boundaries

• Lizza’s Argument: Not a Sex Scandal, a Journalism Scandal
  • Repeatedly insists the core issues are about conflict of interest, Nuzzi’s alleged role in campaign operations, and RFK Jr.’s conduct—NOT merely personal betrayal.
  • Details accusations, including that RFK Jr. encouraged Nuzzi to file a false restraining order to shield him pre-election.
  • Raises (unproven) claims about Kennedy’s behavior—drug use, risk to campaign, potential for blackmail.

“This was not a sex scandal, this was a journalism scandal. There were really important things I needed to say about my ex…The person who has just been…floating above it all is this very influential, important cabinet secretary who has done some things that I think deserve more scrutiny.” – Ryan Lizza [28:37]

• Sources and Corroboration
  • Cites two sources close to Nuzzi as verification for some of the political manipulation allegations.

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6. Public & Professional Reaction

• Mixed Reactions:

  • Lizza describes his circle dividing into “hawks” urging him to tell his story, and others pleading for restraint.
  • Acknowledges the story’s personal toll: “Honestly… my partner [finds it] extremely difficult…Some very close friends told me not to do it.” [35:44]

• Host Reflection:

  • Ben Smith: “If, like he alleged, you know, she was kind of narcing on sources, essentially, to a politician, like, that’s disturbing, and Kennedy is just an unbelievable interesting figure…” [49:55]
  • Ongoing debate: Was it really about journalism, or irretrievably personal? Can these boundaries even be disentangled?

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7. Media Landscape: New Media vs. Old Media

• New Media Triumphs?
  • Lizza frames his Substack series as having more impact than Nuzzi’s traditionally published book, thanks to its immediacy and authenticity.
  • Sees the saga reflecting a broader shift: storytelling, reputation, and truth-telling now as much about individual creators as legacy brands.

“There was a sort of like asymmetric warfare going on, frankly, between this rinky dink substack and this, you know, this massive consortium of media companies…And the truth, in my view, won out.” – Ryan Lizza [45:10]

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• On letting the book stand vs. fighting back:

  “I don’t know if you’ve ever been accused of blackmail…I don’t know if you’ve ever falsely been accused of threatening violence against your fiance…when you’re accused of something like that, you tend to think you should correct the record…” – Ryan Lizza [14:46]

• On embracing fate:

  “It’s amor fati — a stoic expression about, you know, no matter what happens to you, embrace it…you have to find a way to embrace it.” – Ryan Lizza [17:01]

• On the inherent messiness of personal journalism:

  “You can’t really cleanly disentangle these things. There’s no way to. These are human beings. There's not some sort of, like, here are journalism ethics, and here are how human beings behave, and we’re going to totally separate them.” – Ben Smith [51:18]

• On what he’s learned about media:

  “With our fragmented landscape and declining trust in media, you can still find an audience if you tell the truth.” – Ryan Lizza [45:20]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:09] – Lizza explains the moment he decided to publish his account on Substack.
• [07:20] – Lizza’s rationale for personal, narrative-style response.
• [09:54] – Politico’s reluctance and Lizza’s exit from legacy media.
• [14:29] – Why not stay silent? The need to confront public accusations.
• [17:01] – Amor fati: embracing hard experiences.
• [22:18] – Substack economics and legal fallout.
• [28:13] – Lizza’s plan to refocus the story on RFK Jr. and the media’s failings.
• [31:15] – Allegations that RFK Jr. orchestrated the legal dispute.
• [35:44] – Impact on Lizza’s personal relationships and professional standing.
• [45:10] – Reflection: asymmetric media battles—old vs. new.

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Tone and Language

The episode is candid, self-reflective, and at times combative—laced with media in-jokes and admissions of personal turmoil. Lizza is at once direct, defensive, and occasionally darkly funny, while the hosts alternate between skeptical prodding and professional camaraderie.

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Conclusion: What Does It All Mean?

• The episode lays bare the tangled intersection of personal and institutional storytelling, the risks and power of direct audience engagement, and the ways the economic incentives of platforms like Substack are reshaping reputational wars.
• Lizza casts his saga as an object lesson in media responsibility—and in the capacity of individual publishing to counter institutional inertia, misinformation, or omission.
• The hosts ultimately see this as both a salacious media drama and a window onto the blurred lines between human failing, institutional ethics, and the new media economy.

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For listeners and those new to the story, this episode reveals how modern media scandals unfold—and how the lines between personal truth-seeking and professional journalism are more porous, and combustible, than ever.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from us here at Semaphore, where we are talking to all of the most interesting and important people shaping our new media age. I'm Max Tawney. I'm the media editor here at Semaphore and with me, as always, is Semaphore's editor in chief of Ben Smith. Ben, this week on the show we have a very interesting guest, a guest who I think a lot of listeners of the show were probably reading over the holiday season. That's Ryan Lizza. He is the founder and publisher of Telos, which is a substack about Washington and politics and more recently about Ryan's own personal life, his relationship with his former fiance, Olivia Nutzy, and her romantic relationship with with then presidential candidate RFK Jr. Ben, for those who haven't been keeping up with every element and step of this whole saga, can you just explain Lizza and his kind of position in the Washington, New York political media environment?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, Ryan is a journalist sort of exactly my generation and was a real star political reporter who came up in a collapsing magazine world, you know, had an incredibly successful career, was a sort of defining writer for the New Republic during its kind of like last major run and then at the New Yorker, spent time at CNN and at Politic. He was also engaged to a magazine writer named Olivia Nuzzi, who it emerged last September, had had a romantic relationship while they were engaged to the presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She told her version of that at times attacking Ryan. Kennedy has largely declined to comment. But when Olivia's book came out, Ryan responded with a 8 part, 25,000 word subsequent series giving a totally alternate view in which she was not just kind of a reporter who'd fallen in love with a source, but was somebody committing huge journalistic sins and really acting on behalf of a political campaign.

[B]

And that's what really what we're gonna get into today. We're gonna ask Ryan about this saga. We're gonna kind of push him a little bit on why he decided to do this, when he decided to do it. Some of the kind of details for some listeners. I guess the disclosure that we should make is that to really know all the ins and outs of the scandal, you have to be maybe a little bit sick. I think you have to be people like us and have a voracious appetite for media gossip and scandal. So there are going to be a lot of details here that I think would be helped if you've read the series or at least have Been following it on Twitter like so, so many people have. I guess it should also be noted that I worked with Ryan. We briefly crossed over when he was at Politico and I was also at Politico. And Ben, of course, you've known him. And we've all known Olivia as well, personally, you know, and professionally for a long time. We've know a lot of the players mentioned in this.

[C]

I think we're fully disclaimed.

[B]

All right, let's jump into it. We are going to get to our interview with Ryan Lizza right after the break.

[C]

Our friend Josh Spanier, Google's VP of marketing, has a new podcast out called Frontier cmo. It's from Think with Google, and it gets into all the ways marketing is shifting, especially in the AI era, where the old marketing playbooks have become obsolete and the whole role of the CMO is being redefined in real time. Josh talks to the people who are actually figuring it out, top CMOs, industry leaders and creators, and gets into the real world challenges and specific strategies they're using to navigate this new era. These are notes from the marketing Frontier. You can find Frontier CMO on any podcast platform or watch it on YouTube.

[B]

Ryan, thanks so much for joining us. Let's start with the basics here. So your Substack series, which pretty much I think everybody who's listening to this podcast probably is familiar with to a certain degree, one degree or another. When did you decide to do this? When did you decide that you were going to kind of lay out this whole saga in this manner?

[A]

I think if I had to pinpoint it to a moment, it was the moment I got off the phone with Jacob Bernstein at the New York Times, who wrote this pretty puffy piece about Olivia's kind of comeback and the book and the Vanity Fair excerpt. And I had a long conversation with Jacob and trying to explain to him a lot of what I eventually wrote in the series. He had read the book, I hadn't. And I asked him a lot of questions about Olivia's book. And I said, well, does she talk about how this happened previously? So I've got a little puppy here that's running around. Did she talk about how this happened previously in 2020 and how it bl blew up our book project? No, I asked him a series of questions based on pretty controversial stuff that I knew and asked him whether that stuff was in the book. And I told them the book was a work of fiction because the real story is not told. And if you publish this, you're going to be Humiliated. People are going to mock this piece. And this was the night before they were going to press. And I said, jake, you know, I talked to him for, like, two hours. And I said, jacob, you've got to go take what I told you to your editors. And I know people, you know, a lot of people in the New York Times bureau who I've told a lot of this stuff, too, and don't think you should be, you know, resurrecting the career of a modern day Stephen Glass or Jason Blair. And, you know, go talk to your editors and give them a download on what I've explained to you. And he did do that. They came back to me with, you know, they didn't have time to, you know, pull the piece. It had, like, video associated with it. There were PR people involved with it on Olivia's end, and they ran the piece and we'll get into this. And this was just like one of, you know, three or four, maybe five attempts to, like, get this story out in the last year. And I realized that the only way to do it, to the extent that it was important to do, was I had to finally tell it myself. Once I saw that piece, once I saw the excerpt, once I learned about the book, I realized, oh, my God. Not only did she blow me up with these insane accusations and abuse a domestic violence court in Washington at the behest of a top Trump cabinet official, although he wasn't official just yet, but now she's written a book with information about me that is false. Because one of the things that happened in that conversation with Jacob is he wanted to get my response to something she had published in the book. I explained to Jacob why that accusation was false. He was satisfied with what I explained to him, and he removed it. I said, jacob, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You've removed this because I've convinced you it's false. The rest of the book is false, too. But more importantly, there are just sins of omission that you're going to be very embarrassed by when this all comes out if you do some big puffy profile. So I think that was the spark.

[C]

And, Ryan, you're not the first person in the world to have been attacked in public, smeared, and have a big narrative told that, you know, that they really disliked and had factual evidence to object to. And I think the playbook for that is often I'm going to put out a statement debunking the details. I'm gonna respond directly and, like, no further questions. And I think the Thing that very effectively that you did was instead to take your formidable skills as a magazine writer and storyteller and in some sense, fight fire with fire at this very intense way. And was that an obvious thing for you to do? It is not an obvious. I'm not sure I've ever seen anybody do that before.

[A]

I originally was going to write about this when I was at Politico, and there were two moments when I was thinking about doing it. One was before the court drama between me and Olivia, and then after the court drama, one of the reasons we ended up in court is because it got back to her and Bobby that I was planning on writing about this. And so I was doing two things at that moment. I was helping the Wall Street Journal with a piece that would have, in my view, corrected the record on some of the stuff that was floating out there. And then I decided that I'm going to write this myself. They hadn't signed off on it at Politico, but there was an editor at the magazine who liked it. And I started to make some phone calls and do some reporting. Anyway, the restraining order drama blew that all up. I just had to go totally silent right through that whole thing. I mean, once lawyers got involved in everything. And also I was on leave from Politico. So I'm pointing this out because one of the very legitimate questions has been like, why didn't I talk about this previously? And so there are a few opportunities for me to do it. One was at Politico before the court drama couldn't. That all got blown up during the court drama. I had recused myself, and I was on leave, so I couldn't do anything. And then I went back, and this gets a little complicated, and for complicated reasons with what happened between me and Politico. When I came back, I just came to the conclusion that Politico did not want to deal with this, did not want to run this story. They were transitioning into basically sucking up to the Trump administration, and they didn't want this messy story about this crazy situation. To me, that was a huge mistake. They missed one of the great scoops of the moment, and they missed out on getting this story told, you know, before his confirmation hearings. And that's all, you know, that's on Politico. They made it very clear to me that they didn't want that story.

[B]

So can you be a little more.

[C]

Explicit, like, who made it clear to you and how?

[A]

I think the folks at the magazine were interested, but John Harris just was, you know, was not Interested?

[B]

Just for the listeners and viewers. That's the editor in chief of Politico. Sorry to interrupt, Brian.

[A]

Yeah, no, look, I sent John a memo and I said, john, this is your first test of the Trump administration of whether you're going to stand by a reporter who has been blown up by a Trump official. Like, he didn't at first, he did not understand what had happened and can't blame him for that. He didn't understand that Kennedy and Olivia essentially conspired to use this court to shut down my reporting before the election and make it impossible for me to disclose anything that had happened. I explained that to him. He kind of got a little bit of religion about that, took it under advisement. But then it just got very kind of, you know, there's a lot of friction between me and him because I was pushing him very hard. I said, john, if you do anything that looks like you're demoting me or changing my title, you're going to be caving to the Trump administration. That's the signal you're going to be sending. And that caused a big fight between the two of us. And it eventually just led to me deciding to, you know, to leave and not write the piece for them. And I think that was a huge mistake. I sort of think he failed that test and I told him as much. And then I left in April and started on substack. And to be honest, I was actually planning on writing about this, guys. And then Kennedy was confirmed. I frankly never thought it would really matter one way or the other telling this story. I know there's a lot of like, after the fact thinking that it could have affected the election or could affected his confirmation hearings. Maybe that's true, but the world we live in. Was Senator Cassidy or any other guys on the relevant committee really going to care about this? And then just other issues became so much more important that I decided, all right, I'm not going to get into this. It's too ugly. Olivia sent me a signal through a mutual friend that she was never going to talk about this again. During the court drama, she actually tried to negotiate a non disclosure agreement on the whole thing. And I just decided for now, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna do it. I talked to Simon and Schuster a little bit about potentially, you know, including it in a book. But then when I found out that Simon and Schuster was going to publish Olivia's book, I decided like, you know, that was not a relationship I wanted to engage in anymore. And people always ask, like, why didn't I get this out? Why didn't I get this out? I tried to write it for Politico. That didn't work out for reasons I explained. I went to the publisher of Avid Reader Press, sat down for like a two hour lunch at the Harvard Club and explained just about everything that I ended up writing in the Bamboo series. And I thought, okay, these guys now know that they've got like a Stephen Glass, Jason Blair person in their midst. They should go do some due diligence. And then that never happened. So Simon and Schuster knew just about everything that I've published. I laid out that entire story for them, okay? The New York Times knew the night before they published that story. I told them everything. Politico knew. They never pursued the story. And Van Lee Fair should have known. I told Sean McCreesh everything. You know, Sean McCreesh is the boyfriend of the editor of Vanity Fair. And instead of warning him like, hey, this person's ex fiance says that she was doing catch and kill operations for Kennedy, Sean recommended her for the job. You know, by the time the New York Times thing happened, I'm like, fuck, I've got to do this myself if to the extent that I care about the real story coming out. And so, yeah, that's what happened.

[C]

You were saying that a lot of people were asking you, like, why didn't you tell this story earlier? I mean, I think other people, and to some degree this is my personal impulse and we've known each other a long time, are asking like, why did you do this at all? When I read your stuff on the saga, you know, you and Olivia obviously have this horrible breakup and I feel bad for her. Like, you describe her at one point in there as being in a mental health crisis. And then you write this thing not as a kind of, I feel compelled to do this, to make these disclosures to defend my reputation, but as a, like, stylish, gleeful eight part magazine piece.

[B]

I wouldn't say if you run installment.

[C]

Eight, you're clearly having fun writing it. I'm just in the reading, you can tell. And like, part of me is a little appalled by that.

[A]

I wouldn't call it gleeful if you read the first piece where I lay out why I did this. The choice, Ben, was between letting a book that attacked me with false and defamatory claims go unresponded to, as the author, you know, presumably does a media tour and additionally leave the accusations of a year ago in Court in US Superior Court in Washington D.C. leave those unaddressed I never responded to them. I did what you said earlier. I put out a statement and moved on. I moved on. So, Ben, I don't know if you've ever been accused of blackmail. I don't know if you've ever falsely been accused of threatening violence against your fiance or a number of other criminal accusations that she, at the behest of our current HHS secretary, made in a court in D.C. and then abandoned all the claims without ever putting forward a single shred of evidence, then wrote a 300 page book about the entire drama and never again alleged any of those things because she knew that she could get away with filing that in a court where you can't sue someone for defamation, but she couldn't do it in a book. So she said a lot of things that I let go. Right. And I thought we were going to move on and live our lives. And then she wrote a book. Okay, so at that point, I have this decision. One, just be silent, let it go, move on, do what I'm doing, or respond to an in full, finally, to a series of extremely serious accusations that if you Google my name, will live with me, you know, for the rest of my life. So I don't know if you've ever been accused of those things, but when you're accused of something like that, you tend to think you should correct the record, especially when the accuser comes back with a new life and a new set of accusations. And so it's not a great choice. Right. Like, I knew this was going to not be fun to go through this.

[C]

I know, I hear that. But, you know, you wrote in that first thing, and I mean, again, I actually thought this was extraordinary writing. And I read it, you know, I read the hell out of it. You write this thing about loving your fate. Yeah. What did you mean?

[A]

You know, it's amor fate. It's a stoic expression about, you know, no matter what happens to you, embrace it. Because you only have one life and you shouldn't sit around being regretful or remorseful or. And when something happens to you, it now is a part of your life, whether you like it or not. And you have to find a way to embrace it. That doesn't mean you necessarily love it or want more of it, but you do. You do have to grapple with it and lean into it, even if it's hard. And so it's not a great decision. But I don't think I would have been able to face my children if I had lived without ever rebutting some really serious stuff. Now you get your questions about style and the series and how it was done. There was a lot to say. And I didn't prepare any of this. I just started writing. Right. So I just started writing. First one with the surprise ending. You know, I just. I just dashed that out. It was nothing prepared. I thought, oh, this is. You know, this will catch people's attention. And then you're off to the races and you've got to finish the fucking story. Which, by the way, is still not finished. So, you know, it does become a. It became a bit of an anchor at a certain point. But there was, you know, there was a lot to say. You know, maybe I could have said it in half as many. In half as many words, but I had some things I had to. Had to get off my chest.

[B]

Ryan, just to go back to the timeline a second, then we'll move kind of forward. It seems like something happened in terms of your views on how you wanted to approach this when the story came out. You know, initially, when Oliver Darcy, its status broke, some of this news and this court filing, by which time you were obviously vigorously defending yourself and pushing back on Olivia's claims. But during some of this interim period, you were exploring, thinking about writing about this for Politico or something like that, was there a moment in between that we kind of don't know about, where your perspective on it shifted? Because, I mean, the sense that I, at least I got kind of initially, is that this was something that you had wanted to go away.

[A]

I would say, from the moment this thing exploded, you know, September 19, when Oliver's piece came out, and maybe even before that, I have wrestled with, on the one hand, what do I need to tell the world about what I know? And on the other hand, I just want this all to fucking go away and move on with my life. I don't think there's been a day where I wasn't have up until sitting here right now. And, you know, just to go back to Ben's question, you know, I'll probably always think, like, was this the smartest thing to do? But I talked to my lawyers about this, you know, when I was wrestling with this. And, you know, lawyers tend to be very conservative. They were never in favor of doing much public. But one of them at one point said, you know, you can't unknow what you know, and specifically about Kennedy. Like, Olivia spent hours and hours on the phone with this guy and thousands and thousands of texts back and forth, okay? And, you know, only a small Percentage of that was, you know, the kind of romantic part of the relationship. And she spent weeks after I found out telling me everything and showing me everything. And I just learned a lot about one of the most important officials in America. And I tried to get some of that information out before the election via the Wall Street Journal and via Politico. And that blew up because of what Olivia and Bobby did. And ever since learning stuff, I've thought, like, what responsibility do I have to tell people about this and how should I do it? So, you know, depending on what day of the week we were talking, Max, back in, like, the fall of 2024, I may have been telling you, there's no fucking way I'm ever going to write about this. It's crazy. It's too embarrassing. It's too difficult. Or the opposite, because I've wrestled with it. I've wrestled with it for over a year. But the Vanity Fair excerpt, the ridiculous New York Times profile, and the book just made it impossible to stay silent anymore because everyone was calling me anyway. I was going to be called and harassed by you and the whole universe of media reporters. You know, what was I going to do? Get in a tit for tat every day about, like, this part of the book or that part of the book? No, like, I'm a writer. I have a platform, and I knew that people would pay attention to the story. And then there's a whole separate part of this. Whereas if I just take myself out of it, it is one of the craziest stories I have ever seen in all my years covering Washington. And I just, through weird set of circumstances, I just happened to, like, have, you know, be in the middle of it. And I was the only other person besides Olivia and Bobby who knew just about everything. And so I just, you know, amor.

[B]

Fati, this has been, obviously, a really big moment, obviously, for your substack. Can you talk to us? Like, how many subscribers do you have? I know I've, you know, asked, and I'm sure many people have asked how much money you're making from this thing, but how many subscribers? How much is this bringing in on the money part?

[A]

Not enough. Olivia left me with $127,000 legal bill that is still unpaid. And there's nothing that can compensate me for the damage that her recklessness did.

[C]

You're under the legal fees on the substack subscriptions so far.

[A]

Look, the original piece got a lot of attention, right? And a flood of subscriptions. Most of it, I didn't actually pay well. 60% of the whole thing was about 25,000 words. And I was just looking at this morning because I knew you guys would ask about this, but 60% of the series was not actually paywalled, for better or worse. So yeah, there was a flood of subscribers. A lot of those people are not people that are going to stick around. A lot of them will. I think we did better than her book, but that's a very low bar. Once you're in the substack world and once you are in the independent journalism world, it is kind of funny to see how the mainstream media thinks of that world still, like a lot of people would call it, like in a blog post. And there's just this very antiquated sense of the media where people don't understand, like the media doesn't just mean, you know, a few institutions anymore. I mean, this is a lesson most of us learned like 30 years ago. But there is still that sense that somehow writing something in a book or a magazine is different than doing it on substack or a podcast. And that is not the world that we live in anymore.

[B]

Well, we have a lot more questions that we want to get to with Ryan, but we have to take a short break and we'll be right back after this.

[C]

In this week's BrandIt segment from Think with Google, I spoke with Google's VP of Marketing, Josh Spanier, about the age old divide in the advertising business between brand and performance performance. Marketing teams used to be divided between the brand marketers and the performance marketers. Kind of poets versus quants. It seems like that distinction is starting to fade a little bit.

[D]

It is. It's also remarkable how two letters versus versus causes so much angst within the marketing industry. Brand versus performance. And then we debate and debate and debate. The reality is three letters solves it and, and brand and performance, brand and performance and measurement and social and treating our customers like the humans that they are and thinking about the totality of their interactions and how we can engage with them as marketers via full funnel planning. That's the answer to this. And great marketers are adjusting their teams and really trying to embrace that. Full funnel view.

[C]

Has AI affected the, the breakdown in these, in these silos?

[D]

So AI is helping accelerate. It's a great tool, a solution for a lot of things. We've built a whole new suite of AI powered tools like Demand Gen, pmax, AI Max for search. And what they do is they will find your customer wherever they are at and actually irrespective of where they are in their journey serve the most relevant message for them in that moment. It's actually full funnel built in so you don't have to work too hard as a marketer to do it. Google is helping solve it for you.

[C]

Are there metrics to measure brand? That's always been in some way kind of the holy grail for people who like metrics.

[D]

There are metrics to measure brand and performance. One of the things we try to move on from is actually getting lost in marketing metrics versus financial performance metrics, outcome based metrics. What I care about is selling something, not that I've reached a certain number of people in a certain format or channel. So agreeing with your CFO and, and finding the metrics that actually speak to business performance has been the full funnel way to go.

[C]

Where can people find out more about this?

[D]

Head on over to thinkwithgoogle.com the CMO of Chime, the financial services company, has just published a really interesting article about the brand versus performance trap and how to avoid it. It's on thinkwithgoogle.com thanks, Josh. Thanks be.

[C]

Do you think that if you weren't on Substack, if there wasn't Substack, you would have written what you wrote about Olivia?

[A]

I don't know. I mean, I guess we're just not. It's not even. Is it really a question, though? Because there would have been something, right? I mean, we're in a world where could have been.

[C]

You could have had a blog.

[A]

You could have had a blog. I mean, there are thousands of paid subscribers that I had who know my substack largely from things like I published these two pieces by a judge, Michael Ludig. Right. A lot of people who came to me last year were big Ludig fans and loved those pieces. Other people or people who have been following my political coverage for a long time and, you know, some of them sent me notes like, what is this? What are you doing? This is like, I want to, I want you to go back to talking about like the Supreme Court with Michael Ludig and, you know, and doing Substack lives with, you know, with people who are talking about the Trump administration. So there's a risk in making like this, the thing that that Substack is known for. And it's going to be tricky to sort of turn the corner away from this and move on to, you know, the kind of journalism that, you know, I want to get back to.

[B]

That's one of the things that we wanted to ask you about, though. Ryan clearly, you've thought about, you know, having to make the pivot back to doing what you were doing before, which is, you know, more of Washington reporting that doesn't involve you as a character in the story. And I guess as a part of that question, like, when do you see this series kind of ending?

[A]

It should have ended last week, but I just. I've had a lot of trouble writing this last piece, and I was frankly trying to get it done before we had this conversation today so we could talk about it. Some of the stuff I've talked about with you guys will be, you know, will be at that piece, but I really want to try hard, and I don't think I've successfully done it in this conversation, but I want to end this on not talking about the salacious stuff. You know, I tried to be clear in the early. In one of the early pieces that this was not a sex scandal, this was a journalism scandal. And there were really important things I needed to say about my ex. And, you know, she suffered enough, and I have nothing left to say about that part of the story. But unfortunately, and this was by design, when she sort of blew me up in 2024, it turned this thing into a scandal about me and her. And the person who has just been sort of like, floating above it all is this. This very influential, important cabinet secretary who has done some things that I think deserve more scrutiny. And I'd like to sort of, with this last piece, bring it back to him and why some of the things that I've learned in the course of this bizarre story, what they reveal about his recklessness, I mean, this is someone who is bringing back polio and measles and whooping cough, is making a series of decisions at HHS that are killing people. And he very effectively used Olivia to escape scrutiny in this whole sordid drama. And I admit that I've played a little bit of a role in that because some of the things I had to say contributed to this being like a, you know, this cat fight between me and Olivia. And I do want to take it back to a focus on him and a focus on how the media failed in this story. And, you know, in some ways, it's the most important piece to get right. So that's why some of these things have been on my mind in our conversation today.

[B]

Ryan, have you talked to him or anybody in his team at all? Like, have you engaged them at all? Like, do you reach out to them for comments, comment or anything like that?

[A]

I haven't. I just it was. Would be a waste of time. It's a good question, but no, he's in. Every reporter that has tried to get anything from HHS has just, you know, they just shut down. I mean, we're living in a world where you pay no price for that anymore. So I have not reached out to him. The last communication I had with him was when he called me. I didn't answer the phone and he texted me, apologies, butt dial. He did some things that I think are important to get some more mainstream media attention on.

[C]

What in particular? What do you think? Because I think you're right. It's been covered as kind of a salacious tabloid story.

[A]

What here isn't that, you know, Olivia's book did reveal something really important, something I knew, but that she put some important details on. She had a conversation with him as a piece by Isabella Simonetti, who was working with me as an anonymous source to get some of this information out in the run up to the election.

[C]

Wall Street Journal reporter.

[A]

Wall Street Journal reporter. He freaked out about that. And he freaked out about the fact that I was calling around telling people that I was going to write about this for Politico. And he had a conversation with Olivia and said, according to her book, he just needed to get past the election. And he had two concerns. One was about his wife. If people knew the serious. If she knew how serious the relationship was with Olivia, that it wasn't just sexual, but it was emotional, that she might leave him and he didn't want that to happen. And the second thing was about his relationship with Donald Trump. It was precarious at that point. Trump wasn't sure about this Maha bullshit. He wasn't sure about Kennedy. Kennedy had a terrible reputation, and I believe this. And Olivia writes in her book, and I think this is something that's for the most part true. He communicated that to her, told her that she had to take a bullet for him. And the bullet was actually not at Olivia, it was at me. And he ordered her to file a false restraining order against me in D.C. superior Court.

[C]

Okay, and that's your interpretation.

[A]

That is not my interpretation. That is based on two sources who had contemporaneous conversations with Olivia after she got off the phone with him. That's in the series. Okay. It's not an interpretation. And we were prepared to present this in court back on October 15th and then in November when the date got changed of 2024. And of course, she was never going to subject herself to that kind of question. And she threw out the case. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. Kennedy used Olivia to kill reporting in the run up to the election to save his marriage and to. More importantly, to save his relationship with Trump. Within days of being elected, Olivia then withdrew the restraining order application. To me, that's a big deal. Okay. Now maybe he'll come out and say, that's bullshit. Olivia lied. I didn't tell her to do that. You know, whatever his part of the story is, it's important to hear it, because to your point, Ben, my information is based on two people close to Olivia who talked to her after that conversation happened. Right. So I wasn't on the call, but that's a big, important story in my mind, and I've been kind of shocked that the media hasn't pursued it aggressively. Now maybe they just can't get anything out of him. Maybe Olivia, to a large extent, she's still protecting him. Maybe she's sort of, you know, tried to shut it down, said it's not true, although I haven't seen her say that publicly. So that, to me, is a big deal. The fact that he told Olivia that he was using psychedelics and using ketamine, he's a former addict. That's a big deal. He runs the fda. There are important policy decisions he has to make on psychedelics and ketamine. According to Olivia, he was using both of them as recently as 2024. He engaged in an insanely reckless pattern of behavior with her. And, you know, and this is one of those things, frankly, I've wrestled with how much to disclose because, you know, this stuff is extremely salacious, and I got a lot of shit for releasing that PO home. But this guy was running for president, was on this high wire, and was engaging in this insanely reckless relationship, sending information that could have damaged him, damaged the campaign, damaged Trump, could have been used for blackmail if it got in the hands of a foreign security service. None of this came out in the confirmation hearings that, you know, to me, that's all big, important stuff about him.

[B]

Yeah. To do the thing that you've criticized about the media, I want to turn this back to. To you. I'm curious, what if people in your life thought about you putting this out there? Like, you know, I became aware of this because somebody who I think we mutually talked to was like, have you seen in Washington? I was like, have you seen this? I'm curious what people in your. In your life, both professionally and personally, have thought about this.

[A]

It's been polarizing. I mean, I Think one thing that I didn't consider enough was how it was going to affect some people that I'm personally close to. I mean, just to be perfectly candid, it's been extremely difficult for my partner. You know, nobody wants their partner to be spending all this much time writing about a previous relationship. You know, some very close friends told me not to do it. You know, one of my best friends, who's a journalist who you guys know and whose opinion I take very seriously, was just like, do not do this. It can't. It won't end well. And, you know, you'll always be known for this story. And, you know, my view was like, it was too late. I was already going to be known for this in some way. But there are other friends and other family members who were, you know, I guess I would call them the Hawks, who were like, you absolutely have to do this. People, you know, frankly, who were disgusted and appalled by what Olivia did, knew the whole story, and for over a year have been telling me, you've gotta do this. You've gotta do this. You need to tell your side. You haven't told your side. A friend of mine called. I was talking to them the other day about some substack stuff, and she was just like, first, I gotta talk to you about this series. I don't think you should have done it. I just need to get this out in the open. I don't like the way you did it. And then after I started talking to her, I really realized she hadn't really read the whole thing. And in fairness, it's 25,000 words. You can't expect, you know, everyone to read the whole thing. And as you guys know, people base their opinions on things through fragments and what they see on social media and clips.

[B]

And Ben has definitely read the whole thing.

[C]

I read it. I paid my 79 to tell us.

[A]

So, anyway, it's been what you think it would be. It's been polarized. I think the people who mattered the most to me, for the most part, believed. What I believed is that it was not a great choice either way, but that I had to tell some version of this story and first of all, correct the record on my own behalf, but also, like, let the media know that there were these sort of journalistic crimes that were committed that were never uncovered because New York magazine, at the end of the day, didn't want to get to the bottom of it. I hate to criticize them because, you know, they were victimized in this whole thing. But I sent them a long memo and said, these are the questions you need to ask in this investigation. So after I learned there was going to be an investigation, I privately sent a very detailed memo and said, you need to ask, has this ever happened before? Were any journalistic lines crossed? Were catch and kill operations done on behalf of Kennedy? Did she write strategy memos to him? Did she become a political operative for him? I laid it all out in a series of questions, and frankly, there was no evidence that they ever pursued any of that. I know I'm blasting a lot of media organizations today.

[B]

That is true.

[C]

You have to reach out to a bunch of people for comment after this. Right. I'm like keeping a little mental log.

[A]

Not to now turn my wrath on you guys, but you guys wrote a really stupid piece defending her.

[C]

That was me. Don't blame Max.

[B]

That is something that we actually, we.

[C]

Were discussing the piece September 23rd, actually.

[A]

You didn't know, though. You didn't know the New York Post.

[C]

Coverage of that piece. I'm curious your reaction to it beyond just being stupid, which I think my piece was like, look, like journalists are human beings. They make mistakes.

[A]

That's true.

[C]

Have complicated personal lives. Like, that's fair and sort of out of control. Magazine writers have always been a feature of the American landscape.

[A]

All right.

[C]

There are worse things than sex, et cetera, et cetera.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

But, Tom, I'm curious, like, you thought that was idiotic at the time. Obviously I did.

[A]

But in fairness to you, Ben, only because I knew the real story wasn't about sex. It was about her running around. I'm trying hard to put this part of the story in the past because I genuinely think she suffered enough. And I've had my say. But she was running around collecting opposition research from Liz Smith at the DNC and from, you know, Hunter Biden and Hunter Biden's lawyer, who were the, you know, who were the source for the bear story and for these kind of old friends of Bobby and women who she learned about through Jessica Reed Kraus. She was collecting all this stuff affirmatively going out and getting it. It's not just that it was coming to her and giving it to him, both because she wanted to and also he manipulated her in these very complicated ways. And so she was constantly trying to get back in with him when he would cut her off. It was a very sad dynamic. They had another reason that there should be more of a focus on him. And we just can't do that as journalists. You can't cross those lines. You can't. But you know, there's a young campaign aide who came to her with a detailed account of the wild and crazy selection process of Bobby's VP candidate. And she sent it to Bobby. She outed him. All right.

[C]

Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's a lot worse.

[A]

So I knew all this stuff and I knew that this was not like, oh, she had a little. She exchanged some, like, flirtatious texts with someone she wrote a profile of. If that were all that happened, I would probably agree with your assessment back in September, but I knew it was so much worse than that.

[B]

So, Ryan, I wanted to wrap this up, but I actually do. I realize I have a follow up question that I kind of want to ask you here. Because you knew about the Mark Sanford situation, which you wrote about in your first entry, in which you say that Olivia slept with Mark Sanford, which is somebody else that she profiled. It seems like you're implying there that this is a part of a pattern of behavior. How did that factor into how you saw the RFK situation?

[A]

Well, there was a personal component to it in that, like, you know, I just thought, like, I'm the stupidest person in the world, obviously. Like, I cannot believe this happened twice. I mean, imagine my surprise that almost four years to the day later, the same fucking thing happens. It's a second presidential campaign. We've got another book contract because the avid reader guys were so just patient with us, and she did the same exact thing. So on the one hand, it's like, well, you know, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. There was a certain amount of that. And I think I've been appropriately criticized by a lot of people for giving her a second chance, for trying to repair our relationship, for trying to, like, dig ourselves out of that insane drama. But I genuinely, you know, thought that there were some sort of weird circumstances that led to that thing with Samford. And we did a lot of, you know, work to kind of move past it. I was wrong. I was obviously very wrong. And, you know, by that point, I woke up and just realized I didn't really know this person. This person lived a double life for a year. So when I would tell the story to people, I would always say, like, it was like waking up and learning that your partner is a heroin addict or has joined a cult. Like, the degree to which I realized I had been completely conned and fooled and this person was living a second life was, you know, just off the charts. I mean, literally from that point on August 17, 2024, when I confronted her. I viewed this story in a much more detached way, almost anthropologically and as a reporter, because I was just so. Once I got over the shock, I was just so fascinated by it. Cause it is genuinely a crazy story. And this goes back to what you asked before, Ben. I think that's what allowed me to write it in the kind of. In a sort of, I don't know, in a literary nonfiction way. Because it's a crazy story, right? It is a genuinely crazy story. And why not, you know, treat it with a certain sense of humor because there are some genuinely funny parts to the whole thing and in a, you know, hopefully self deprecating way. And so, you know, that's that. That's how I. That's how I looked at it.

[C]

Just to sort of pull it back, you know, you spent your career writing about all this stuff and did find yourself kind of a, you know, a character in the Daily Mail getting stalked by paparazzi and in this funny or orthogonal relationship to the media's attempts to adjust to Donald Trump and to Donald Trump's return, his pressure on the media, and I guess to kind of end this conversation at a higher altitude, you know, what do you feel like you've learned about the American media through this?

[A]

Oh, we need another hour, guys.

[C]

Look, that's what I was afraid of.

[A]

I mean, one obvious lesson. Olivia wrote a book and I wrote a series on substack. And what mattered in those two mediums was which account was true and which account seemed more real. And I think that was an interesting experience to be sort of in the middle of that, to see Simon and Schuster, this huge conglomerate, make this big bet on this book and spend all that money cutting down trees and distributing it and hiring Risa Heller to do PR and convincing the New York Times to do this puffy piece and convincing the new editor of Vanity Fair that this was going to be like his big splashy debut. And then just sort of coming along with, not, I don't want to be too pat myself on the back, but just coming along with the truth and was able to sort of cut through all of that bullshit, right? And there was a sort of like asymmetric warfare going on, frankly, between this rinky dink substack and this, you know, this massive consortium of media companies pushing Olivia's account in front of everyone. And the truth, in my view, won out. That's an important media lesson. With our fragmented landscape and declining trust in media, you can still find an audience if you tell the truth.

[B]

Well, Ryan, that feels like a really good place for us to leave it. Thank you so much for joining us. This is a really interesting conversation. I think we might have to do some reaching out for comment now. I don't know. Ben and I will discuss. We'll figure it out. But Ryan, thanks for coming on the show. We appreciate it.

[A]

Thanks, guys. This is a good conversation. First, first time I've done anything like this. So I'm glad.

[B]

I know. Thank you. Yes. That's a mandatory part of our booking.

[A]

So people who are going to be mad, but I'm glad I did with you guys. Thanks. Thanks for letting me say this.

[E]

Hey, everyone, I'm Manny, a producer here at Semaphore. With a quick note about today's episode, Max and Ben reached out to everyone Ryan Lizzo referred to in this interview and received the following responses. First, Olivia Nutzy declined to respond to Lizza and hasn't publicly engaged with his allegations. When she withdrew her request for a protective order last November, her Lawyer said, quote, Ms. Nutzy has no interest in fighting a public relations battle. Secondly, in response to Liz's comments about Jacob Bernstein's story story in the New York Times, a spokesperson for the paper told us, quote, the Times publishes information that we are able to confirm through reporting. We require multiple sources to verify facts and we don't publish innuendo. Our article on Ms. Nutzy included the details we could confirm and it's untrue to imply otherwise. Thirdly, in a statement, Politico editor in Chief John Harris said, quote, ryan Lizza never shared with me details of the complicated interactions and drama involving himself, Olivia Nutzy, Robert Kennedy Jr. And other political figures that he ultimately described in his substack column. No one at Politico turned down a piece from him on this subject because one was never presented to us. There is not, quote, a lot of friction between Ryan and me. I wished him well when he left and and still do. And finally, New York magazine declined to comment. We'll be back with the mixed signals debrief right after this break.

[C]

There's new content waiting for you on Think with Google that you won't want to miss. Think is the destination for marketers to access things like first of its kind, research on AI adoption with the Boston Consulting Group, insights on four key consumer behaviors, streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping and deep dives on emerging technology and strategies that drive real growth. Get all of that and more by heading to thinkwithgoogle.com.

[B]

Ben There's a million ways that we could take this a million directions this is a pretty crazy and wide ranging interview, I feel like, with Ryan. But I want to kind of get at the claim that I suspect maybe you're the most dubious of. Did you buy his argument that this is really not a story, that's a sex scandal, and that really it's a scandal about RFK Jr. And, you know, the kind of things that he was trying to do to achieve and maintain power, and that ultimately kind of people are getting distracted by the other stuff. I don't know. What did you think about Ryan? Casting it that way, I guess is how I should frame it.

[C]

I mean, honestly, I found myself a little more persuaded than I expected to be. Wow. Like, I genuinely did, having read his stuff, come in thinking a little like, a little unpersuaded that this was a real moral imperative to do this. And I do think still, you know, it's not history's greatest set of crimes. But I agree if, like, as he alleged, you know, she was kind of narcing on sources, essentially, to a politician, like, that's disturbing, and Kennedy is just an unbelievably interesting figure who, I think it's not inconceivable is gonna run for president in three years. And so I do think, you know, fundamentally, if you're gonna make the case that this is an important and interest, it's gonna be because it's a story about him.

[B]

I do wonder what happens if Olivia doesn't file, you know, that police report. I think we're having a very different conversation now. I think that clearly was the thing that sent Ryan kind of over the edge and, you know, set him on the path to kind of. To do this. I wonder if he would be writing the same kind of, you know, capital James story without that. Obviously, that element is intertwined with the story in general, but I do think it's hard for me to see kind of where the personal feelings and the kind of professional journalism concerns kind of begin. He said at one point in the recording, you know, that this was just also kind of just a crazy story, one of the crazy stories. And it kind of just happened to be happening to me, which I can see myself having a similar type of reaction. I feel like if I had found myself in this position. I don't know. What do you think of that assessment, Ben?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I think the reality so often of journalism and of politics is like, you can't really cleanly disentangle these things. There's no way to. These are human beings. There's not some sort of, like, Here are journalism ethics, and here are how human beings behave, and we're gonna totally separate them. Right. I have some sympathy for. I mean, I realized he thought that John Harris was sort of preemptively caving to the Trump administration by not running this story. But I also do think, like you could imagine from an editor's point of view, like, this is just inseparably mixed up with this, you know, complex personal relationship that has blown up in the most nuclear possible fashion. And maybe I'll keep my news brand apart from that.

[B]

Ben, would you have run the story if he came to you and said he, I've got this.

[C]

It would have depended what publication I was editing and what and kind of in some sense what that place's brand and identity and mission were, Right? I think at BuzzFeed, we definitely would have published it.

[B]

BuzzFeed runs the story. Maybe a longer conversation.

[C]

Maybe you're gonna have to put this one in your substack at Semaphore.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

What did you think? I mean, in a way, I thought the place that he concluded was really interesting, which is like he saw himself as the sort of David up against the Goliath of this publicity machine around the nutsey book, Vanity Fair, Simon and Schuster, these, you know, giant 20th cent, and that he basically, with his little speedboat, like, torpedoed them and destroyed her book bubble, you know, her sort of her book launch and won. And that it's in some sense a story of new media beating old media.

[B]

You know, actually, I feel like he took it actually in a slightly different direction than that. I thought that's where he was going to. But he was making a broader point, you know, about the capital T, truth and like, the truth won out. I'm sure that there's more to the story that, you know, that we don't know. Despite the fact that, you know, obviously I think that, you know, much of what he was saying was that we haven't heard any sort of meaningful pushback on. I do think that. But he did show that if you have a set of facts that are not known by other people and you are smart about the ways in which you kind of put them out, kind of dribbling them out, writing it in a serialized manner, that, yeah, you can beat the kind of big, slow moving, older legacy institutions, though, obviously. I also think that it's slightly more complicated than it was presented there. I don't know. Ben, what did you think about this?

[C]

Yeah, you know, it's funny. I mean, I guess another thing that I think about and worry about is the kind of journalism we do and that the world is moving toward is so rooted in individuals and in putting your confidence in an individual journalist and understanding where they're coming from. But of course, like, you know, we're all flawed. And what happens when that individual's life really deeply gets in the way of their journalism one way or the other? And this is true for Ryan as well as for Olivia. Right. Like, how do you, as a, how do you as the publisher who has sort of tried to stake out this new modern relationship between the brand and the individual voice and creators and talent, like, you know, sure gets messy. Didn't have to worry about that back in the days when everybody was a faceless cog.

[B]

That's true. No, the cogs are more visible than ever. And this was used to be able.

[C]

Just to go out and do depraved things and nobody cared.

[B]

But now that's true.

[C]

Stakes are higher.

[A]

Woo.

[B]

That is it for us this week. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Mixed Signals from us here at Semaphore. Our show is produced by Manny Fadal and Josh Billenson, with special thanks to Anna Pizzino, Jules Zern, Chad Lewis, Rachel Oppenheim, Tori Kaur, Garrett Wiley, and Daniel Haft. Our engineer is Rick Kwan and our theme music is by Steve Bohm. Our public editor is all of the editors listed in this episode who Ryan had various problems with. John Harris, editor in chief of Politico. Who am I forgetting? David Haskell, of course, of New York Magazine. Oh, and Marco Duce of Vanity Fair. Guys, please let us know what you think.

[C]

If you like Mixed Signals, follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And Please subscribe on YouTube.

[B]

And if you want more, you can always sign up for Semaphore's media newsletter, which is out every Sunday night.