Share & Jailbait & Tell with Mike Schur and Jessica Smetana

Summary

Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: Share & Jailbait & Tell with Mike Schur and Jessica Smetana
Date: November 21, 2025
Featured guests: Mike Schur (TV writer/producer), Jessica Smetana (journalist/host)

Episode Overview

This episode dives headfirst into a sensational media and journalism scandal centered around Olivia Nuzzi (often mispronounced throughout as "Newsy"). The trio—Pablo Torre, Mike Schur, and Jessica Smetana—dissect an intricate web of personal and professional entanglements spanning high-profile journalists, political figures, and the changing incentives of journalism. The conversation unfolds with biting wit and sincere concern about the state of media ethics, ultimately climaxing in the reveal and analysis of a long-lost pop song, "Jailbait," from Nuzzi's teenage years, which serves as a strange lens through which to view her current persona and the spectacle of modern media.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Olivia Nuzzi Saga: Scandal, Affairs, and Journalism’s Red Lines

• Introduction of the Main Story
  • Olivia Nuzzi, known for penetrating political profiles, becomes the media’s main character after details emerge of her romantic entanglements with men she covered, including Keith Olbermann, Ryan Lizza, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and—most shockingly—Mark Sanford.
  • "This story … what the fuck is journalism anymore?" — Pablo Torre (06:08)
• Mike Schur’s Hollywood Logline
  • Mike describes the situation as too implausible for TV, requiring massive simplification.
  • “If this screenplay were turned into a studio executive, … the first no would be like, ‘way, way too over the top. You gotta strip out half of these characters. No one will believe this.’” — Mike Schur (06:43)
• Chronology and Cast of the Affair
  • Nuzzi’s complex relationships: dated Olbermann, then Lizza (both with significant age gaps), emotional digital affair with RFK Jr. during campaign coverage, and the bombshell revelation of an affair with Mark Sanford.
  • “She had crossed a journalistic red line. How could we write a book about the presidential campaign if Olivia had a sexual relationship with one of the candidates?” — Ryan Lizza (as quoted by Pablo Torre) (10:44)
• Meta-Connections and Satirical Mirroring
  • The group finds humor and meta-irony in their own proximity to various figures in the scandal. Mike Schur reveals he based a “Parks and Rec” character on Mark Sanford.
  • “He was just having four-way sex in a cave in Brazil. It was based entirely on Sanford, who at the time we thought was the funniest version of those guys because the lie was so outrageous.” — Mike Schur (12:46)
• Reactions to the Scandal's Media Treatment
  • The story’s meme-ification, think pieces, and the “main character-ification” of journalism are recurring themes.
  • “We are eating it up.” — Mike Schur (25:02)

2. Reflections on Nuzzi’s Writing & Legacy

• Is Nuzzi Actually Good?
  • Jess presents extended excerpts from Nuzzi’s writing (about Trump and others), questioning its literary merit; Pablo sees satirical intent, Mike appreciates its performative and profile-as-politics ethos.
  • “Her writing is kind of bad.” — Jess (16:51)
  • “She seemed to understand that political writing was no longer Woodward and Bernstein, but was essentially a celebrity profile … She had this kind of like faux poetic style … It just worked.” — Mike (20:21)
• Ethics, Shamelessness, and Modern Journalism
  • The group traces the story to broader trends: journalism as a path to notoriety, not truth-telling; the collapse of ethical boundaries between journalists and subjects; and the perverse rewards for shamelessness in the attention economy.
  • “Shamelessness is a market inefficiency these days.” — Pablo Torre, quoted by Mike Schur (23:13)
  • “Celebrity is the same as credibility too.” — Jess (26:23)

3. Who Is Attracted to Modern Journalism?

• Personality As Product

  • Pablo introduces the notion that the evolving media landscape now attracts those seeking fame and narrative control, not mere reporting.
  • The episode reveals Nuzzi’s origins as “Livy,” a 16-year-old pop aspirant, complete with a cringey (and, in hindsight, foreshadowing) song called “Jailbait” and dramatic MySpace persona.
  • “This is the thing that a lot of journalist friends of mine have been saying, which is … they were raised to know, to understand that you are never the story. And Olivia Newsy is clearly [thinking] ‘How do I get to be the story?’” — Mike Schur (34:18)

• Spotlight on “Jailbait”: Cultural and Personal Implications

  • The group reads and analyzes the song’s lyrics and the accompanying MySpace bio, finding uncomfortable resonances between youthful provocation and later real-life choices.
  • Jess voices discomfort at the blurred boundaries between performance and life:
    • “We're talking about a person who's been in, like, multiple relationships with large age gaps. And the song is called Jail Bait, … This is like, past the level of like, ‘Oh, this is funny and embarrassing.’ This is like an actual, like, crime that she's singing about.” (37:29)
  • Pablo reminds listeners that all confirmed relationships began after Nuzzi reached adulthood, but the symbolism and character arc seem tragically on-the-nose.

4. Meta-Analysis: The State of Journalism & Public Life

• From Watchdog to Main Character
  • Mike laments the collapse of journalistic objectivity and the reversal of roles: “The whole point of this was … there’s a wall between the people doing stuff and the people writing about that stuff. And the wall will never be cracked or broken. … The relationship is entirely flipped. And now the politicians are telling the journalists what to say and what to do.” (40:30)
• The New Incentives
  • Pablo and Jess reflect on the impossibility of teaching aspiring journalists to avoid making themselves the story, as fame and notoriety have become the most reliable paths to longevity in the industry.
  • “It’s very hard. I don’t know if that's a lesson that you can still teach people in college—that they will not be lasting long in the media world if they want to be the story … This seems like a really sure fire way to not go away in this industry.” — Jess (47:04)
• Epstein-ian Parallels & Journalistic Corruption
  • Jess references the “shamelessness as political weapon” email in the Jeffrey Epstein dump (52:39).
  • Mike critiques the practice of journalists saving information for personal gain (books, notoriety), further eroding the public trust.

5. Conclusion: The Blurring of Art, Person, and Persona

• Pablo’s Final Take
  • The “Jailbait” song is seen as both embarrassing relic and prelude to a career that makes personal narrative the core of public persona.
  • “If you see her as this person, as this truly American figure who’s trying to write and rewrite her own story to maximize impact and visibility and celebrity, as her 16-year-old self tried to articulate, you see this whole song … as like the precursor to the ongoing experiment of American media in 2025. And I'm like, I think all of this is fair game. I think all this is very funny. I think all this again is infuriating because there are people who aren’t doing it this way and they fundamentally are being left behind.” — Pablo Torre (50:32)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the state of journalism:
  • “Notoriety is better than quality.” — Mike Schur (26:26)
• On the “main character” problem:
  • “The divide here is that they were raised to know, to understand that you are never the story. And Olivia Newsy is clearly [thinking] ‘How do I get to be the story?’” — Mike Schur (34:18)
• On Nuzzi’s “Jailbait” Myspace page:
  • “Livy is a pop chorus. Livy is a rock ballad. Livy is a hip hop beat. Livy is the past, Livy is the future. Livy is now and she’s about to blow your mind.” (37:29)
• On the incentives of media:
  • “We’re all creators. Mike is a creator. Jess, you’re a creator. I am a creator. Livy as a creator. Donald Trump is a creator. We’re all like people with like, things that we want others to consume.” — Pablo Torre (43:22)
• On shamelessness:
  • “Shamelessness is a market inefficiency these days.” — Pablo Torre via Mike Schur (23:13)
• On the “Jailbait” song:
  • “You might even say that this song, Jess, is a bit of an earworm.” — Pablo Torre (56:05)
  • “Low key slaps.” — Mike Schur (56:05)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:20 - Podcast proper begins; Pablo announces the hot topic: the Olivia Nuzzi affair(s) and media scandal.
• 06:08–12:46 - Story breakdown: Olbermann, Lizza, RFK Jr., Sanford, New York Times glowing profile, and the details from Ryan Lizza’s substack.
• 16:45–21:28 - Dissecting Nuzzi’s writing; debate about her literary value and satirical intent.
• 22:31–26:26 - Modern journalism’s perverse incentives; shamelessness and notoriety as currency.
• 29:22–37:29 - Exploring Nuzzi’s MySpace persona and pop song “Jailbait”; reading and reflecting on her bio and lyrics.
• 40:30–42:43 - Big-picture ethics crisis: the death of the journalistic wall.
• 47:04 - The futility of telling newcomers not to make themselves the story.
• 50:32 - Pablo’s summing-up; the “art project” of Nuzzi’s career.
• 56:09 - Finale; “Jailbait” as the ultimate “earworm”.

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Tone and Style

The conversation is sharp, wryly self-aware, and occasionally incredulous. Mike Schur brings narrative clarity and wry amusement; Jess Smetana adds cultural perspective and ethical concern; Pablo Torre is both ringmaster and moral commentator, periodically breaking the fourth wall to underscore the absurd spectacle. The entire episode is steeped in satirical observation—earnest about the stakes but unafraid of gallows humor.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode explores how a sensational personal scandal, in which a prominent journalist becomes entangled with her political subjects, unravels foundational assumptions about media ethics, journalistic incentives, and the drive for notoriety in the digital age. Through sharp discussion, the hosts track how performance, persona, and public narrative have overtaken traditional reporting—culminating in a cringe-turned-cautionary tale, courtesy of an unearthed teen pop song. The result: a reflection on fame, ethics, and why journalism today may only rarely serve its intended purpose—though it never fails to entertain.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

So the reason you're hearing and seeing me right now is because we have a bit of incredible news to share. Our show, Pablo Torre Finds out was not only named one of the best of 2025 by Apple Podcasts, but our episode the Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree, which was, you know, the whole investigation into aspiration and Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers, was also chosen as one of Apple Podcasts best episodes of the year. You can check both of those things out, the best shows and the best episodes list right now in the Apple Podcast app. So thank you so much for listening. Thank you for making clear what Apple Time Apple Time actually means. And today you are going to find out what this sound is. He desired. He desired desiring. He desired being desired. He desired desire itself. Right after this ad, an all new season of the Secret Lives of Mormon.

[Jess]

Wives is now streaming on Hulu. Mom Talk started as a sisterhood and.

[Pablo Torre]

That'S gone to flames.

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[Pablo Torre]

This is gonna be catastrophic.

[Mike]

We're fighting for our marriages and the.

[Pablo Torre]

Girls are just putting us through hell. They make everything about themselves.

[Jess]

I can't. Hopefully this doesn't end in a bloodbath.

[Pablo Torre]

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[Jess]

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[Pablo Torre]

Terms apply.

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[Pablo Torre]

So this is one of those episodes where I'm mad that we're taping and I have to time stamp it. We're taping this at 11:38am Eastern on Wednesday, November 19th because as a matter of just what I've been excited to show both of you, we are going to talk about the story that all of I think journalism and the media, political and otherwise, has been talking about. But are you familiar with the song.

[Mike]

Oh no.

[Jess]

Jess what song?

[Pablo Torre]

Mike? Sure.

[Mike]

Just you saying that makes me gives. Mike's My stomach hurt.

[Pablo Torre]

I don't know if the world's going to know the answer to my question by the time that this comes out, but the fact that you don't is why I want to do this. You guys, you guys know each other. You guys passive aggressively text each other.

[Jess]

We're besties.

[Mike]

Never actually been in the same room, but we know each other very well.

[Jess]

We've been in the same football stadium though. Mike.

[Mike]

That's true. We've been, we've both been in Notre Dame stadium to see a Notre Dame game. Although it should be noted that I was texting. I was there with my wife wife and my kids and I, I texted Jess about something about how about the in stadium experience which I found lacking. She and I texted back and forth a number of times and then only much later did she mention that she was also in the stadium. And I was like, what? Like you were also here? My son was visiting the school in part because he wants to see if that might be a place he wants to go. He specifically wants to potentially study sports journalism. And I was like, it would have been great if I could have introduced him to a working sports journalist. And she was like, oh, my bad. That was the end of the.

[Jess]

Honestly, like it's about right. I thought that you would have just kind of assumed I was there and that's why I was texting you about it. But then I realized that that would be a crazy assumption because it was like the Boise State game.

[Mike]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Why?

[Mike]

Why? It was very, very smart.

[Pablo Torre]

And let me ask you a question, Mike. How have you explained to your son the story that I am most excited to talk to you guys about? The story of the journalist Olivia Nuzzy. Nuzzi Newsy.

[Jess]

Okay, can I just give you a little bit of context here? I tried to look up how to pronounce her last name correctly before I came on Today and I went on YouTube. Obviously there was very conflicting reports. I was trying to hear herself say it. I listened to Al Franken's podcast from last year to hear how he said it, hoping she would introduce herself. No, he said nutsy. And then I. I scrubbed forward to see what she said about RFK Jr. But I don't want to skip ahead.

[Pablo Torre]

In the mic sure. Ification of this story, which is both very, very funny and very, very, I would say, meaningful from a like, what the fuck is journalism anymore? Perspective. The pronunciation I think Mike would write for. Her last name is Newsy.

[Mike]

Yeah, that's how I say it. I say Newsy. I don't know if that's correct or not, but that does seem like the right way to say those letters with associated with that person.

[Pablo Torre]

Mike, can you explain what this story is? As a resident Hollywood screenwriter, what's the logline on this screenplay?

[Mike]

I would say first that if this screenplay were turned into a studio executive, the first no would be like way, way too over the top. You got to simplify. You got to strip out half of these characters. No one will believe this. I tried to make an organizational chart which essentially turned into power rankings of like, who of the people involved in the story. So Olivia Newsey. And correct me if I get any of this wrong, Lavie Newsy is a journalist. She's written for New York magazine. She's written for a lot of very famous publications. I'll do this as simply as I can. She dated a long time ago. When she was very young. She dated Keith Olbermann. So she dated and I believe lived with Keith Olbermann when he was 50 something and she was 20 something. They had a tumultuous affair. That relationship ended. Then she dated. Lizza was next, I guess, right?

[Unknown Female Advertiser]

I think so, yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Jess]

Ryan Lizza, in his story that he wrote the other day, he mentioned that she had just come out of this.

[Mike]

He had helped her get her out of the Olbermann thing. Right. So Ryan Liza, a journalist for the New Yorker and she, they dated when there's like a 20 year age gap there. She was in her mid-20s, he was in his late or mid, mid-40s. He was booted from the New Yorker for his own sexual misconduct situation that I not 100% familiar with.

[Pablo Torre]

Yep.

[Mike]

Later in 2024, Olivia Nudzi did a profile on RFK Jr. And his long shot bid for the presidency and ended up having an emotional affair with him that was purely digital.

[Pablo Torre]

Clarify meaning like over the Internet. Internet, yes.

[Mike]

He of course is married to Cheryl Hines of Curb youb Enthusiasm fame, among other things. But they had a pretty explicit digital affair which led to the dissolution of the relationship with Ryan Lizza.

[Jess]

We're getting very close to six degrees of separation from Mike. Sure. Here.

[Pablo Torre]

I'd like to also, I, I, the.

[Mike]

Walls are closing in.

[Pablo Torre]

As someone who used to fill in for Keith Olbermann on his ESPN2 show, Olbermann, I've. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm basically.

[Mike]

Yeah, you're close this to this too.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I'm in a digital relationship with Keith Olbermann in a more just objective sense.

[Mike]

So then, so that ends Ryan Lizza and Olivia Newsies relationship, also ends her journalistic endeavors. And then she disappears. And then just a couple weeks ago or maybe a week ago, there's a, it's sort of like her comeback now, which is she has a glowing, maybe satirical, but maybe not profile in the New York Times.

[Pablo Torre]

I don't think that was a terrible.

[Mike]

She did it all for love.

[Jess]

Can we mention who it was written by?

[Mike]

Oh God, I forgot about this.

[Jess]

Jacob Bernstein, the son of Nora Ephron and Carl Bernstein.

[Mike]

Carl Bernstein's. That's right.

[Pablo Torre]

This is now our Watergate. As a related concern. Yes.

[Jess]

Now Nixon is involved to just drag in another disgusting politician.

[Mike]

It has all sorts of details in it about how she disappeared to Malibu and she's been writing poetry and she drives around Malibu in a white Mustang convertible and so forth. And this is all a precursor to the book that she wrote that is coming out now, which explains all of this in great detail.

[Pablo Torre]

And then you're not going to mention the title of the very, I would say modest title of the book.

[Jess]

American Kanto.

[Mike]

Yeah, American Kanto.

[Pablo Torre]

Which is the reference, of course to, you know, Dante, I suppose, and I guess, and.

[Mike]

Or Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. No, no.

[Pablo Torre]

Or Jorge Cantu, the former Tampa Bay Ray's infielder.

[Mike]

The Final blow is that on the eve of the publication of the book, Ryan Lizza puts a thing up on his substack or whatever it is that he's writing now. And it involves, it's called like How I Found Out. And it tells this story of like her coming home from covering this presidential candidate and notes from her purse spilling out on the floor. You know, as notes do.

[Pablo Torre]

Can I read the kicker of Ryan Liz's substack post, which really did escalate the story from. This is a thing that lives in group chats all across the media universe and its surrounding galaxies too. We need to do an episode about this because to quote Ryan Lizza, I was sure our relationship was over and certainly our book project was dead. She had crossed a journalistic red line. How could we write a book about the presidential campaign if Olivia had a sexual relationship with one of the candidates? I looked at the date on her aborted letter to Mark. March 5, 2020. Just a few days ago, I called my agent. We have a big problem. I said, Olivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford.

[Jess]

What a twist. He wrote this entire post as if it were revealing the behind the scenes story of the RFK affair, only to then have this last line twist that no, she had a different affair with a candidate for president that she was covering and it is a. Also just a horrible guy.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, also, it's like. And it did have the feeling of like the post credit scene of the Marvel movie, but instead of Thanos, it's Mark Sanford. And for those who had no idea who Mark Sanford was, that's kind of why it's amazing. It's just like what the Mark Sanford.

[Jess]

Let me read his Wikipedia subheaders. This is my favorite game to play. Okay. U.S. house of Representatives, governor of South Carolina, subheader 2002 election, first term, 2006 election, second term, 2009, disappearance and extramarital affair, impeachment proceedings, censure, fallout from scandal, veto record and then hiatus from politics.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, and now there's going to.

[Mike]

Be a new one, right? It's. It'll be a fair personal life, rumored affair. Yeah, personal life.

[Pablo Torre]

Mike's here also because he truly did create a character in one of his television shows based on Mark Sanford.

[Jess]

Oh, I didn't know this.

[Mike]

Yeah, yeah. There was a guy named Councilman Dexheart who Councilman Dexar was a. Was a city councilor in Pawnee who was. The bit was just that he was constantly admit having and then admitting to happily admitting to various scandals. And it was based on Sanford and he, with the first time you see him, he's giving a press conference where he talks about how he's apologizing for this and he's apologizing for that. I wasn't just having sex. I was making love to a beautiful woman and her boyfriend and a third person whose name I never learned. It was wrong of me to say I was building houses for the underprivileged when I was actually having four way sex in a cave in Brazil. It was based entirely on Sanford, who at the time we thought was the funniest version of those guys because the lie was so outrageous and, and so like just so egregious. He was around for the entire run of the show, basically.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, that's a trustworthy man of God.

[Mike]

But we, we cast that actor because he vaguely looked like Mark Sanford.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. So basically the spokesperson for Mark Sanford had to say to the press that the disappeared congressman from South Carolina was hiking the Appalachian Trail. That's where he was. That's why he couldn't get back to any of you assembled Americans. And it turned out, yeah, he was just his mistress in, you know, Argentina.

[Jess]

As one does.

[Pablo Torre]

As one does. The thing about reading Ryan Liz's post, by the way, it activated in me like the nostalgia for, finally we have a media scandal worthy of the extremely Internet addled brains of everybody who works in and around journalism. Because these are two real writers. I want to acknowledge this, like, frankly, until the excerpt from her book, which was excerpt in Vanity Fair where Olivia Newsy now works, I did consider her as a writer to be a very compelling and interesting person, like for New York Magazine. Mike, as a matter of covering Trump and the campaign trail, all of it is relevant, especially because she was seen as something of a whisperer for these freaks who would like, get them to say things to her that they weren't saying to anybody else. And now we have this context via Ryan Lizza, her ex, who also did political coverage for the New Yorker. The most like, serious, hallowed of all of these places, you could argue.

[Mike]

Yeah, she was sort of a, like a, a, a younger, like sort of glammed up Isaac Chotner in a way where it's like she would get people to say things and admit things over the course of conversations that just didn't seem like they would be admitted to anyone else or spoken aloud to anyone else. I really liked her writing. It was really fun. It was a sort of intersection. It wasn't, it wasn't hardcore serious, you know, political writing necessarily, but it was Political writing for the 21st century. Politics has become more than ever a cult of personality. And I'm going to find a personality and sort of like spend time with them and write about what I think makes them compelling or interesting. And she was really good at it. And now, you know, now you've got to go back and retroactively question all of the things you ever read that she wrote.

[Jess]

Well, I find that difficult to believe, given the recent excerpts of her writing that I've read. And I must admit, I was not really reading a lot of her work in the lead up to the 2016 election. I was not really working in media yet at that point, but once I was working in media, I realized she is sort of a media main character of a lot of newsrooms. I was working at Vox right out of college and certainly her name came up all the time. But I wouldn't necessarily say I read a lot of her work. Now, since this scandal has broken, I have read excerpts from her book and even an excerpt from a story she wrote about Donald Trump last year. And I have to say, as someone.

[Pablo Torre]

Who, as the control group in this.

[Mike]

Experiment, what are you experiencing?

[Jess]

Her writing is kind of bad.

[Pablo Torre]

Do you have evidence for your claims?

[Jess]

This is from a article about Donald Trump in 2024. And I read this in Jeremy Fassler's Medium post about her, where I also learned that she was an intern on Anthony Weiner's failed campaign back in the day when she was a lot younger. But here is the excerpt. This is after his assassination attempt at his rally in Butler Pennsylvan. An ear had never before been so important, so burdened. An ear had never before represented the divide between the organic course of American history in an alternate timeline on which the democratic process was corrupted by an aberrant act of violence, as it had not been in more than half a century. Yet an ear had never appeared to have gone through less, except there, on the tiniest patch of this tiny sculpture of skin, a minor distortion that resembled not a crucifixion wound, but the distant aftermath of a sunburn.

[Pablo Torre]

See, here's the thing about that passage. When I read it at the time, I was like, this feels. This actually felt partly satirical, as in, it was like tongue in cheek. Tongue in cheek. Better term, it felt tongue in cheek, because it was all about the dramatization of the performance of Trump surviving this near death experience. I will admit, though, that what I saw as a tongue firmly in a cheek when she was being edited in New York Magazine, when I read the excerpt of her book, and books are famously less edited. It did seem to sound very strange a contextually it sounded tongueless. It was just like, oh, I mean, can I read you the part of.

[Mike]

Her book about the worm?

[Jess]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You want me to read the worm passage? Okay, I'll read this one then. I did not like to think about it. Just as later, I 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 loved the private ways that he was mad. I loved that he was insatiable in all ways, as if he would swallow up the whole world just to know it would be 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. A doctor he trusted had reviewed the scans of his brain obtained by the New York Times, he said, and concluded that the shadowy figure was likely not a parasite at all. He sighed. It was too late to interfere with what had already vaulted from the sphere of meme to the sphere of screwy legend. But at least I did not have to worry about the worm that was not a worm in his brain.

[Pablo Torre]

Can I give you the part that I read that I was like, oh, this is the other. The other thing. And I should. I should say that this was sent to me with the. With the Twitter caption. Did the worm write this quote? Like all men, but more so, he was a hunter in a literal sense. He used not a bullet but a bird. It was not about a chase, but about a puzzle of logic and skill that amounted to a test of his self mastery. He was the mouse and the architect of his maze, the giver of his own pleasure and torment. He desired, he desired. Desiring, he desired being desired, he desired, desire itself. I understood this just as I came to understand the range of his kinks and complexes and how they fit within what I thought I understood of his soul. Yo, that worm is horny though.

[Mike]

Well, this okay, going back to this tongue in cheek thing, right? Like part of what I think made her readable in my mind and what I legitimately enjoyed was that she seemed to understand that political writing was no longer Woodward and Bernstein, but was essentially a celebrity profile, that it was all. Everything has just become a celebrity profile. And she had this kind of like faux poetic style that sort of put. It was like, yeah, this is how these People should be covered. Donald Trump isn't a politician. Donald Trump is a celebrity who is trying to run for office. And so the writing kind of in its, in its like, glossiness and sort of like slightly over the top rot pros matched the, the vibe of the country and it matched the vibe of these politicians. It's performative. Politics is so performative now. And she is a perform. And so it just worked. Like, I. That's why I liked her writing. I was like, yes, this is the kind of writing that matches what we're seeing in the. In the politicians themselves.

[Jess]

You've convinced me. This is a good case for me recanting my. Her writing is bad American recanto. Her writing is American recanto. Her writing is not for me. But I do appreciate if it is meant to be a little tongue in cheek, worm in head what she's trying to go for.

[Pablo Torre]

And this is now where it gets very like, okay, you're doing way too much. Is that when it comes to her book, you sort of get, I think, a more performative version of what I used to think was like, oh, someone who was paying homage to like, Hunter Thompson or like a gonzo journalist who embedded with these freaks and came away with the ability to channel their voice. And now when it comes to the voice being channeled, I think of RFK and his actual voice and I'm just like, What. What was FaceTime cheating with RFK? Actually, even, like, who was she writing for? It all changes now in retrospect.

[Jess]

And it is also the profession where you don't get a fool me once. Shame on you. Whatever. Like, you. You sleep with one source who is running for president, and you would think that would be career ending. And yet she lands with a cushy west coast editor v. Fair job afterwards before the allegations of this other affair came out.

[Pablo Torre]

And that part, Mike, is where I'm just like, as somebody who has critiqued journalism on the Internet for years and is also apparently raising a child who's interested in the premise of it, I think that this is on some level both extremely funny and also infuriating like that this is how this actually happened in real life.

[Mike]

Well, again, I. The last time I was on your podcast, I quoted you to you, and I'll do it again. It's your observation that shamelessness is a market inefficiency these days.

[Jess]

You know. You know who else said that, by the way? Jeffrey Epstein in one of his emails about Donald Trump.

[Pablo Torre]

I.

[Jess]

Whatever.

[Mike]

But another thing that Pablo and Jeffrey.

[Jess]

Epstein, I was gonna say you and.

[Pablo Torre]

Jeffrey Epstein, we're gonna need to find that quote.

[Jess]

I'll find it.

[Pablo Torre]

Actually, I regret asking Jess to do.

[Mike]

That, but here's the moment from the culture that rang in my ears. Do you remember? I don't know if you saw it, but when Jorge Santos, right after being expelled from Congress, went on Zway's show, which is incredible, it's an incredible 20 minutes, and she says, Zwe says to him, she's making a joke about, like, how do we get you to go away? Like, what could we do to get you to go away? And he was like, nothing. You'll never get me to go away. And she was like, I think the way to get you to go away is to stop inviting you onto my. Onto my shows.

[Pablo Torre]

Right.

[Mike]

And he smiles this incredibly insouciant smile and he says, but you can't, because people want the content. And I think about that all the time. And when this story broke, you just watch the machine rev up. You watch the gears heat up and start churning. And then like after Ryan Lizza publishes this thing, Keith Olbermann weighs in from the rafters. And then other people write to him and they say, hey, man, maybe sit this one out. And then he responds to them and you just watch as the Eddies just ripple out in every direction. And it's just generating think piece after think piece after article after response after blog post after substack post. And it will never end. And that's what Olivia Newsy understands. We are eating it up.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. The penalty, such as there will be one will be effectively. And I've. I don't even know if it will happen. Right. I don't know if Vanity Fair necessarily cares in its sort of reimagined state that their west coast editor has had affairs with two presidential candidates. As Jess's point, that she was covering as a political journalist. I genuinely don't.

[Mike]

That we know of, by the way.

[Pablo Torre]

That we know of only in part one of Ryan Liz's substack series.

[Jess]

The next one's about Michael Bloomberg.

[Pablo Torre]

The thing that would be the penalty is banishment from the industry, which can't even truly reward economically the journalist who would otherwise be conflicted about, like, what am I going to lose here? It's just obviously economically the right choice. Not that you even planned it this way, to pivot towards being the main character who you then want to hear more from. Because what she has done is anti journalistic. Like, that is more financially rewarding than whatever job at any publication would be. And that's partly why all of this is both very funny but also infuriating.

[Mike]

Yeah, it's the world of of the Internet where bad is the same as good and rage is the same as joy and anger is the same as happiness.

[Jess]

And celebrity is the same as credibility too.

[Mike]

Exactly, exactly. Well put. Notoriety is better than quality.

[Pablo Torre]

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[Jess]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[Pablo Torre]

The question though, is like, who gets attracted to these jobs? Like, who wants to do these jobs anymore? And so in politics, you have a very clear model for, like, the influencer, corrupt, very transparent fraud who just can ride the wave of attention towards something like actual power in journalism. Let's be clear. There have always been, I would say, ego monsters and transparent frauds. And some may think that I am exactly that as a related concern. But what's happening in terms of who gets attracted to be in media is now a function of what does media even mean anymore? And so the thing in Olivia Nuzzy's pre political journalism resume, pre working for Anthony Weiner, by the way, on his campaign staff, is the thing that I was curious if you guys have seen because she, as I believe Ryan Liza mentioned, was a child actor that was mentioned in his substack post. But did you know that she also was an aspiring pop star?

[Jess]

Oh, no.

[Mike]

They call me Jailpace? Cravings sin we walk a fine line, A game I win that word out to find a teenage queen right in front of you? Illegal dream killer to pursue? Not your girlfriends, not the girl next.

[Pablo Torre]

Door, not your girlfriend?

[Mike]

I'll give you just enough and leave your wanting more?

[Pablo Torre]

Jail bait, I'm jail bait? You try to stay away but you can't obey? Jail bait, no, but you can't play? Cause I'm jail fate? Jail fate? You try to stay away but you can't ob. I mean, there's a lot more. There's a lot more. Oh, my God. It goes on like that for a while. I'd like to introduce you to Livy. This is her MySpace page that has been found on the Internet archive, the official MySpace page. And Olivia, when she was 16, wrote a song that she released and recorded called Jailbait.

[Jess]

Oh, my God.

[Pablo Torre]

There's a deep textual analysis that I don't even think we need to do because it seems a bit obvious as to what it is. But the quote, bad things happen when you hear my name. Deny your attraction but I've got no shame? 16 will get you 20. Don't even think about it because baby, I'm not your girlfriend. Not the girl next door, not your girlfriend. I'll give you just enough, then leave. You wanting more jail bait? I'm jail bait. You try to stay away, but you can't obey.

[Mike]

Is she in front of like a New York electronics store with the metal grate down? What is this?

[Jess]

I think so.

[Mike]

Is that what that is? But she's like, it's the closest she could come to finding a place that looked like a prison.

[Pablo Torre]

I was gonna say, because I know that this was done years ago. I can't declaratively say that it is what I think it is. Which is a legal vape store in New York City in 2025.

[Jess]

That's what it looks like. You need the geoguessr guy to get the reflection of those buildings off.

[Pablo Torre]

We'll get Rainbow on this, but Jess, could you read her about page?

[Jess]

Sure. This is on MySpace.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Jess]

The day that Madonna released erotica. The day that Andy Warhol made his first film. The day that Freddie Mercury sang his last note. The day that Judy Garland conceived Liza Minnelli. The day that Britney Spears told you to hit it one more time. The day that Cher first met a sequin. The day that Candy Darling took her last breath. The day that Mick Jagger first struck across the stage. The day that Pamela Anderson was introduced to silicone. The day that David Bowie sang Lady Stardust. The day that Michael Jackson first slipped on a white glove was the day that Livy was born. Livy is a 16 year old singer, songwriter and actress. A former Wilhelmina model, she has appeared in various commercials, films, television programs and print ads since her start in the business at the age of five. Influenced by pop stars, rock stars, rap stars, movie stars and tabloid stars, Livy is prepared to explode on, explode onto the music scene and dominate the pop world.

[Pablo Torre]

She's in the proud tradition of all of these great artists who did stuff, but even in that right, there is some like, precocious cultural literacy that seems like it's trending towards being satirical, but also isn't my view.

[Mike]

This, this changes a lot. I would say in real time, I'm. I'm recalibrating because now what I think this is, is a, is the specific contemporary disease of everyone is a star. And that this is a person who clearly like craved fame and stardom from a very early age. And at 16, is comparing yourself to Andy Warhol and David Bowie and, and Michael Jackson. And then when that, when that mindset is like transported into the, into the brain, into the career of a journalist. Then it's like her goal is not to break the story or to, or to like uncover the truth. Her goal is to use whatever the job is that she's doing to make herself into the David Bowie or Michael Jackson or of that. And so that's the. This is the thing that a lot of journalist friends of mine have been saying, which is like the, the divide here is that they were raised to know, to understand that you are never the story. And Olivia Newsy is clearly was like, how do I get to be the story? I am the star. I'm not the person doing the profile. I'm the person someone else does the profile of.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, look, I think that there is, there's a deeper conversation and this is why I say like, I think there is a bit of like new journalism meaning like the school of new journalism that was more narrative in terms of like the magazine writers who came to power, who were, you know, again, the Joan Didian. Like we're going to imitate her and her voice and that's going to be part of like the memes is like Joan Midian is a nickname that she has received. The point being that that school of new journalism in which the author, the reporter was also a character is one that I personally enjoy and have lately leaned into some right in terms of like I'm a character in this story too. But what this is to. To Mike's point, Jess, to continue to read the about page is something that is even more, I would say, like weaponized as the bio proceeds. A visual conceptual artist with an addiction to pop music, Livy has recently collaborated with international chart topping producer Roy Royalty Hamilton. Her piercing lyrical skills perfectly complemented Hamilton's in your face production, ultimately producing a fierce three song demo. Creating a multimedia character for herself, Livy has dreamed up imocative E M O C K A T I V E Colon. The life of a Pop Object. A short film series shot on the streets of downtown New York City. With her creative partner, visual artist Eliza Bren, Livy shows you the life of a loyal disciple of pop culture who has given up conventional life and engulfed herself in a world made of plastic. Livy in all caps is a pop chorus. Livy is a rock ballad. Livy is a hip hop beat. Livy is the past, Livy is the future. Livy is now and she's about to blow your mind. Pop gave me life, period.

[Jess]

I have, I have a lot of thoughts. So this is obviously the first I'm finding out about this character who then became this person who is a very famous political writer, like we've mentioned. But my first thought in hearing just the lyrics of that song is we're talking about a person who's been in, like, multiple relationships with large age gaps. And the song is called Jail Bait, and she releases it when she's a minor. And the lyrics are very clearly inappropriate. Like, I'm not making any allegations or anything like that, but this is just a really uncomfortable. This is like, past the level of like, oh, this is funny and embarrassing. This is like an actual, like, crime that she's singing about. And it's just very uncomfortable.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, but what she would argue, perhaps, is that this is art about.

[Jess]

Yes, right.

[Pablo Torre]

That I. Character.

[Jess]

Yes.

[Mike]

But.

[Pablo Torre]

But what. What you just pointed out is, I think, probably proof that we buried the lead, which is that it is one thing to create art in which you are, like, sending up the premise of Jail Bait and performing the theater of, like, what older men are into.

[Jess]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

Only to then in real life, use your position as a journalist to get into various high profile age gap relationships with way older politicians.

[Jess]

Yeah. And I'm not even. I'm not alleging any of those are illegal either. I want to make that clear. As far as we understand, like, all of. Including with Keith Olbermann, occurred when she was an adult.

[Pablo Torre]

Absolutely, absolutely. And by the way, as I always say on this show when I talk about Bill Belichick and Jordan Hudson, like, fundamentally not here to yucky or yum, if it is a legal yum, that's just your thing. But when you see it in the. In the arc of this character.

[Jess]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

It's just like, well, this is a bit on the nose. Like, I don't think that. Let's put it this way. If I was Mark Sanford and I was shown the MySpace page for Livy, I wouldn't feel great about what exactly is happening here. Even as. As the active, powerful man in the relationship, I am also somebody who should be held to every form of account on the basis of my hypocrisy and also my influence and power.

[Unknown Female Advertiser]

Right.

[Jess]

Oh, man, there's a lot to unpack here. And I also, in a much broader sense, not even just particularly about Newsy, but maybe we can't have Woodward and Bernstein's anymore because we never would know what their MySpace pages would have said when they were in high school, and it would have been equally as potentially.

[Pablo Torre]

Cringy spoken word rap album.

[Jess]

I mean, yeah. Mike, Mike, what are your. You've just been. You've just been engaged.

[Pablo Torre]

Mike's got into dad mode. I feel like Mike is like now thinking as a parent and he's horrified by everything.

[Jess]

I mean it was like one thing to find out she had a, a fledgling pop career. But then the lyrics of the song have really stopped me in my tracks.

[Mike]

Jess, I want to walk on eggshells very carefully here about what this implies or does not imply. But what I would say is that you get called stodgy and, and old very quickly when you start talking about stuff like this. But I just feel like my philosophy of the world boils down to one very simple thing which is that there are two industries that should never be for profit and those are health care and journalism. It's like these are two things that are just fundamental to, to the, to the experience of living in a country like America or should be, which is that we should know what's going on objectively. We should be able to go to the doctor and not go bankrupt and forget that part of it. But as far as the, the news goes, it's like there, the whole point of this was in my mind there's a wall between the people doing stuff and the people writing about that stuff. And, and the wall will never be cracked or broken. And also the people who are doing things, the politicians and the athletes and whoever else need to fear and respect the people who were the journalists covering them. The, the authority has, and the power has to reside in the people who are writing about the news because that's how you get freedom of the press and that's how you get a well informed public. And that has. The first of all, the wall's broken down entirely. There's no wall anymore. And also the relationship is entirely flipped. And now the politicians are telling the journalists what to say and what to do and what they can and can't do. And that is just a very dangerous thing. And I know this is. There's a lot of tawdry tea being spilled here and there's a lot of like oh my God, can you believe this? This is hilarious. Oh my God. Incredible. Hahaha lol going on. But this story in its own little corner of the Internet is representative to me of like this massive problem of just like you get power, fame, money and attention for doing the opposite of what you're supposed to do as a journalist. And I wondered what it was like to be a person who like cares about essentially honest reporting and to watch something like this unfold and just realize what an uphill battle we're all fighting if we care about this stuff.

[Pablo Torre]

Look, my thing is I am caught trying to do two things. One is see Olivia Newsy and Livy, her former life as a teenager, as symptomatic of this larger movement and evolution in the incentive structure of what it means to be a person in journalism, which really is media, which really is just being a public figure at this point as everybody is just, you know, flattened into just another thing occupying the same space that like the rock is on your timeline.

[Jess]

They're all, they're all in this like vague influencer.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, just like when I go to things now, I'm like, it is, I'm a creator.

[Jess]

Yeah, right.

[Pablo Torre]

We're all creators. Mike is a creator. Jess, you're a creator. I am a creator. Livy as a creator is a creator. Donald Trump is a creator. We're all like people with like things that we want others to consume. And yet the other thing I'm trying to do here is figure out how extreme is this character such that it is not exactly symptomatic, but is like this overwrought character that I do think I want to actually quote the press release for when it came to the announcement of her debut single, Jail Bait. So according to the PR firm, this is another thing you guys have not seen. 3-7-20. 3-7-2010. The headline of this PR release is Livy gives us something to talk About.

[Mike]

Oh God.

[Pablo Torre]

With the release of her debut single Jail Bait, Livy proves that it is still possible to shock, period. This is how the press release begins.

[Mike]

And these are.

[Pablo Torre]

These words are all in quotes. Offensive, vapid, frothy, bubblegum, outrageous, morally bankrupt and undeniably infectious. These are just some of the words that have been used to describe Jail bait and the not yet legal mind behind it. 16 year old singer songwriter Livy, quote, I know that people are going to hear the song once, see my photo and immediately come to the conclusion that I'm a brain dead blowup doll like so many pop tarts me. And that's great. It's fabulous. Livy says no intellect is necessary to listen to my music. It's pop, it's fun, it's danceable. But at its core, this song is a social commentary, dot, dot dot. It just happens to be insanely catchy. End quote. And he goes on to say, though just a teenager, Livia's had some experience in the world of entertainment. Beginning her career as a child model at the age of five, she quickly moved into acting, ultimately appearing in a succession of commercials, films and television shows. The camera exposure had a profound effect on the young attention seeker. Libby became obsessed with Hollywood, mtv, and subsequently with pop music. Quote, I'm in a lifelong love affair with pop. It's a genre that's looked down on. People say, quote, you're not an artist because you're young and hot, you make catchy music and you wear thigh high socks, end quote. But that's the point. We're all artists on some level. It's just that not everyone has this insatiable need to act as a human mirror and push society's buttons. Luckily, I do have that need, end quote.

[Mike]

So that's March 2010, you said.

[Pablo Torre]

That is March 7, 2010.

[Mike]

So that's just for the record. One, almost one full year after Mark Sanford, a 50 year old politician, admitted to having an extramarital affair instead of hiking on the Appalachian Trail and had to resign in scandal.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, put that in your timeline. Yes, into your org chart. But, but again, you just see like.

[Jess]

Yeah, like she's, she's like saying that she is creating a provocative character. So I guess maybe we shouldn't read too much into the lyrics and, and take any sort of meaning about her out of it. That she is trying to push buttons, I guess.

[Pablo Torre]

But I also think that when you see the, the way it's promoted, even like the release of a press statement about your art being like, I am the mirror onto human society, declaring that at age 16 in a press release alongside this MySpace page, it just feels like on some level this fundamental blurring between I am a commentator on something and I am the thing that is being commented on.

[Jess]

So let me bring up an anecdote from when I was in college. I'm around the same age as Olivia Nudzi, so I'm curious if this ever came up in her studies as well. But I took a number of like journalism broadcast classes and I remember always hearing if you want to get into this sideline reporting, broadcast journalism, whatever, and you are doing it because you want to become famous, you will not last very long. If you want to get into it because you like telling stories, because you like actually working, because you want to actually help people consume the sport or whatever the thing is in a digestible way, and you like to report the news, then you will have a future in this because it's very hard. I don't know if that's a lesson that you can still teach people in college that they will not be lasting long in the media world if they want to be the story, because as we've seen time and time again. This seems like a really sure fire way to not go away in this industry.

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[Mike]

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[Pablo Torre]

At the end of every episode of Palatore finds out, we go around the table and say what it is we found out today. And I think I'll start Just because this has been an episode in which we are forced to. As the father of a daughter, I can't believe I waited this long. As the father of a daughter, I am trying to be like very open minded about what a 16 year old young person thought they were trying to do artistically and to then give them just sort of like this wide berth of like, yes, it is deeply embarrassing to be locked into a prison of Internet archived MySpace page that some podcaster dug up and then followed the trail of breadcrumbs towards a hidden soundcloud for the producer you worked on the song with and then unearthed the actual song entitled Jailbait. It is one thing to do that, and in a vacuum. I would not have done that just because Olivia is somebody who was writing for New York magazine. But when you see her life, I think in the context of this ongoing art project, this like at its most generous, right, we could call it a journalism inspired art project in which she is sending up and mocking the compromised writers of yore, many of whom had, of course, relationships and dalliances with their sources in politics. That's not new. She didn't originate that. But if you see her as this person, as this truly American figure who's trying to write and rewrite her own story to maximize impact and visibility and celebrity, as her 16 year old self tried to articulate, you see this whole song not as a thing in isolation, but as like the precursor to the ongoing experiment of American media in 2025. And I'm like, I think all of this is fair game. I think all this is very funny. I think all of this again is infuriating because there are people who aren't doing it this way and they fundamentally are being left behind.

[Jess]

What I found was the email from Thomas Landon, the New York Times reporter who was embroiled recently in this Epstein email dump, to Jeffrey Epstein that said, actually, I don't think he or voters would care. Being effectively shameless is a pretty powerful weapon for a presidential candidate. And that was what I was referencing earlier. And that brings up another can of worms about a journalistic what's with all the worms?

[Pablo Torre]

What's with all the worms?

[Jess]

Journalistic sources.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. Oh, but familiar, man. Yes, that's.

[Jess]

That's an episode for a later date.

[Pablo Torre]

It is, but just like what a source and the journalist in their private time do such that one knows the game being played and the other doesn't.

[Jess]

Yep.

[Pablo Torre]

And the question, Mike, I suppose, which is this is a really. That is. That is truly the beginning of another conversation. But like who's being served there? Right. Is the public winning if you're playing that private game? And that, I think, is also what this story is about too.

[Mike]

Look at the number of people that we already know as we sit here. The Senate has voted to release the Epstein files. And who knows what has been done to them or what's been. What will have been redacted or removed or whatever. But look what we already know about the number of journalists who had this, like, during Trump won, before Trump won, all the Michael Wolffs and the. And the Woodwards and all of these people at the New York Times and. And I'm sure other places who absolutely knew this and credulously wrote front page story after front page story about what is. What's on Anthony Weiner's iPad. What are these Hillary Clinton emails they had. They were themselves emailing with Jeffrey Epstein about Donald Trump. Like, that's mind blowing. And in at least some cases, we know for a fact, Wolf and, And Burn and Woodward specifically just save these things for their books. They save them so that when they release their private, the beneficial, economically beneficial projects, they have the good stuff and the course of history is perhaps changed.

[Jess]

Right.

[Mike]

And that is unconscionable.

[Pablo Torre]

I do want to quote the kicker to the excerpt from American Canto here at the end. Because when I open my eyes, I see still the blur of colors, the flash of red, of blue, of white. I mean to tell you now, as best I can. And scene.

[Jess]

I thought I was gonna end with her. That's what the worm looks like. It's red, blue and white.

[Mike]

She was looking under a microscope.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, God.

[Mike]

Jesus Christ.

[Jess]

This song is shot. I'm still, I'm still.

[Pablo Torre]

You play that one more time, I'm blown away. We play that song. Go out on that song. Bad things happen to those who pray A basic instinct to die another day.

[Unknown Female Advertiser]

16 will get you 20 lust criminally.

[Pablo Torre]

Irresistible that's why they call me. It's got a little.

[Mike]

She went for a little gaga at the end there.

[Pablo Torre]

You guys are just going to be walking around humming this to yourselves.

[Mike]

Now, can I just say, here's the most controversial take of the whole day. Low key slaps.

[Pablo Torre]

You know what? You might even say that this song, Jess, is a bit of an earworm.

[Jess]

No.

[Pablo Torre]

That's why we do this. I'm so angry. That's what yes, yes. That's why we podcast. Pablo torre finds out is produced by walter averoma, maxwell carney, ryan cortez, juan galindo, patrick kim, neely loman, rob mcrae, matt sullivan, claire taylor and chris tominello. Rstudio engineering by rg systems sound design by andrew burcic and ngw post theme song as always by john bravo and we will talk to you next time.

[Commercial Announcer]

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[Pablo Torre]

It's holiday cheer arriving at Ulta Beauty.

[Commercial Announcer]

With gifts for everyone on your list.

[Pablo Torre]

Treat them to fan favorite gift sets.

[Commercial Announcer]

From Charlotte, Tilbury and Peach and Lily.

[Pablo Torre]

Go all out with timeless fragrances from.

[Commercial Announcer]

Ysl, Ariana Grande and Carolina Herrera. And you can never go wrong with an Ulta Beauty gift card.

[Unknown Female Advertiser]

Head to Ulta Beauty for gifts that.

[Commercial Announcer]

Make the holidays brighter and even more beautiful. Ulta Beauty gifting happens here.

[Jess]

Hey, I'm Paige desorbo and I'm always thinking about underwear. I'm Hannah Berner and I'm also thinking about underwear, but I prefer full coverage. I like to call them my granny panties. Actually, I never think about underwear. That's the magic of Tommy John. Same. They're so light and so comfy. And if it's not comfortable, I'm not wearing it. And the bras? Soft, supportive and actually breathable. Yes. Lord knows the girls need to breathe. Also, I need my PJs to breathe and be buttery, soft and stretchy enough for my dramatic tossing and turning at night. That's why I live in my Tommy John pajamas.

[Mike]

Plus they're so cute because they fit perfectly.

[Jess]

Upgrade your drawer with Tommy John. Save 30% for a limited time at tommyjohn.comfort. see site for details.