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Journalist Olivia Nuzzi had to resign from her job at New York magazine because it was revealed that she was having an affair with RFK Jr. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I know a thing or two about falling under the sway of people that you look back and you go, what? That's insane. What was I thinking? I look back on my early 20s and I'm proud of some of it and I'm not proud of other parts of it. I talk about some of it. I don't talk about some of it. You know about some of it. Maybe you don't know about some of it. I wrote about a bunch of it and trust me, I'm lost. Which came out back in 2012 as sort of an expose and a tell all slash memoir about my pride through the media and marketing and PR system in the sort of mid aughts web 2.0 bloggy world. It was crazy. I screwed up. I look back and I go, what? What was I doing working for some of these people? What was driving me? I mean, in retrospect, this stuff becomes clear, right? I was clearly imprinting on some of these figures like that were powerful and successful and controversial and they seemed confident, they seemed smart. They had like an energy that I went to like a moth to the flame. Dub Charney being one, a guy who was brilliant and provocative and creative and a genius in many ways, and then tragic and flawed and dark and ultimately quite a scary figure in other ways. I remember towards the end, you know, when he was fired by the board of directors and there were these investigations, I remember, you know, my life was threatened. I remember checking my car for bugs. It was a crazy period. I would just go, how did I get here, what happened? What was I thinking? And, you know, it's not just like it was inexplicable, like, it had consequences for people. I, I, I did things that I shouldn't have done. I talk about this in Courageous Calling, actually, like, where I got asked to do this thing that was not just illegal, but, like, morally repugnant. And I didn't do it. But I, I didn't exactly resign in protest. And I, I didn't because I was, I was scared. I didn't because I didn't want to lose my salary. I didn't want to get fired. Like, in retrospect, it's obvious. Like, why would you want to keep a job that not doing something illegal could get you fired from? But when you're twisted up in it, when you're in the moment, when you have made compromises along the way, when you've turned your eyes away from things along the way, when you've said things publicly, you get twisted up, you get upside down, you get in over your head. So do I regret that period of my life? I mean, yeah. I also obviously understand that it was formative. It shaped me. I wouldn't be here if that hadn't happened. So I guess I'm just saying it's complicated and something I'm still dealing with in processing my own role in it. What I did, what was done to me, what I should have done differently, what I learned, what I took out of it, which is basically all that you can do in life. And we all have our own versions of that. It's not an excuse, it's an explanation. And I say all this to segue to today's guest, who I've known for a while. I appeared in one of her stories once because someone she was writing about had read, trust me, I'm lying. And, you know, we've gone back and forth every once in a while. I'm a big fan of her writing, and you've probably read some of her pieces, too. I mean, her pieces drove the news cycle many instances over the last decade or so. When Donald Trump first met Olivia Nuzi, as she writes in her new book, American Canto, she says Trump looked me up and down and said, very young, very beautiful. And then the same person, when she wrote a piece that he didn't like, tweeted that the reporter was a shaky and unattractive whack job known as tough but dumb as a rock, who actually wrote a decent story about me a long time ago. Her name is Olivia Newsi I guess what I'm saying, if you have no idea who this person is, is that she's been on a wild ride here in the Daily Stoic podcast. We don't usually talk about the events of the news. We don't break news, we don't talk about scandal or gossip. We talk about ancient philosophy, we talk about timeless lessons. We talk about being a person in the world. If you know anything about Olivia's story, you know, well, she got herself into some trouble. In fact, she was supposed to record this like a week ago, but she was in the middle of parting ways with Vanity Fair, the second sort of shoe to drop in a series of shoes to drop in the last year or so. She talks about all of this in her book American Kanto, which I will read the first sentence in the back cover. It says, a mesmerizing firsthand account of the warping of American reality over the past decade as Donald Trump has risen to dominance from a participatory witness who got so far inside the distortion field that it swallowed her whole. Olivia Newsy spent a third of her life observing those in power. She became a reporter in 2014 when the political landscape began to reconfigure itself around a singular personality whom she was uniquely primed to understand. Over the next 10 years, she used her access and eye for detail to chronicle his campaigns, trials and government. And blockbuster feature stories that drove the national conversation propelled her to the heights of her profession. Then in 2024, her personal life collided with the public interest in a scandal that cost Newsy her job and reputation. Amid a full blown tabloid frenzy, Newsy went quiet, drove west and spent the next year in self imposed exile at the edge of the country where she wrote this searing and astonishingly clear eyed account of what she and we have experienced over the last decade. I will say this book is actually very good. I thought the reviews did it a complete disservice. I don't know what exactly is motivating some of those reviewers and writers. I don't know what exactly people wanted, but I thought as a piece of writing, I say this as a person who has written books, written a book about media and their own role in it, and as a person who owns a bookstore and loves this genre of writing. I think it's actually a fantastic book. I think it's worth reading like so many of her articles are worth reading. I'll give you a couple famous ones. I examined Donald Trump's ear and his soul at Mar a Lago, the conspiracy of silence to Protect Joe Biden and then the one that ultimately led to the events that we will be speaking about directly and indirectly in today's interview, the mind bending politics of RFK Jr. S spoiler campaign. So look, if you know about this story or don't know about this story, let me tell you sort of what to expect in this interview. I'm not holding her feet to the fire. I am not interrogating her. I'm not that interested in the specifics and the gossip or the did this happen and what about this and why didn't you do this? I am just interested in what it is like to be a person on one side of something like this. What happens when what the Stokes would call the passions overwhelm your faculties, your values, your decision making process and you get yourself into real trouble? What happens when, again, another ancient term, you unleash the furies of the public's sense of injustice upon yourself? Right? What does it feel like to be publicly shamed? What does it feel like to lose your perch at the top of your profession, both deservedly and undeservedly for things you did do and things you didn't do? We talk about the difference between guilt and shame. We talk about who leans in and who leans out in situations like this. How you learn to trust yourself when you have a pattern of behavior or thinking that does not serve you well, that gets you into trouble. I don't know how much more I need to introduce this. I think it's a great interview. I think the book is great. As I said, she signed a bunch of copies. We have them at the Painted Porch. You can go back and read some of her writing. She's worth following on social media, on Instagram, she's livianuzi. X. Paradoxically, Twitter, she's Livianuzi. And thank you to Olivia for coming out. She didn't have to do this interview. She didn't have to reschedule this interview when her life blew up like a second or third time. But she came out to Austin to do it. Then we walked around the Painted Porch, the video of that bookstore walkthrough posted up on YouTube here. Probably tomorrow, maybe. I'm glad this happened. Seems like she's doing better than I would have expected. So that's good to hear. For people who are following very closely, who are angry or worked up about it, I would say I get it. Like I'm pretty, as I say in the interview, pretty understanding of people who get themselves into situations like this because I've I'VE been there at least a little bit myself. But also, like, there is no one who is less of a big fan of the. The other person involved in this than. Than me. I mean, I think he's one of the chief villains of our time. I think he has done unimaginable harm. I shudder for young children, not just here in America, but in the developed world. The sort of just profoundly wrong and dangerous and deranged things he has done to not just like the medical system, but the public good that is public health and the public good that is our information about public health. So I am not a fan. In fact, I will say just a little inside baseball. Back In February of 2024, somebody asked me if I wanted to come to this, like, dinner he was at with a bunch of other podcasters. Maybe he'd come on the show. And I said, thanks for the note. Hope you're doing well. I could not in good conscience attend, let alone donate money in support of someone who has spread so much utterly untrue and dangerous nonsense for so long. I wish Mr. Kennedy nothing but failure and shame because at this point, obscurity is too much to hope for. So if I can separate my feelings about that to the human being that was involved in all this and have this conversation, I think you should be able to do that as well. And I feel like I learned a lot. I enjoyed the book, and as always, I will keep reading what Olivia is writing because she is a great writer and I hope she keeps doing it. And she signed a bunch of copies of American Canto, which we have at the Painted Porch. I will link to that in today's show notes. Or you can swing by the store on historic Main street here in Bastrop, Texas, to grab it. I grabbed mine at the Seattle airport, flying back from my talk there. I guess this was Thursday. She was gonna do it on Friday, had to cancel last minute. We moved it to Saturday, and then this stuff with Vanity Fair happened, so we canceled it. I wasn't honestly totally sure if it was gonna get rescheduled, but I was pleasantly surprised when she popped up at the Painted Porch here on following Thursday. So that would be, I guess, two days from now. If you're listening to this on Saturday when it comes out again, grab signed copies of American from the Painted Porch or wherever you get the book. She read the audiobook, which I'm sure is a great listen. And let's just get into it, okay? I have a book for you. I thought. I thought about it as I was Reading the book. I'm going to walk you through the bookstore and pick out some. This is actually my copy. But I wondered, have you read by Grand Central Station? I sat down and wept.
