What's Next?

A few quick announcements about what to expect from now until the end of the year

I’ll host our next Ask Me Anything chat for paid subscribers today at 12:30 ET. This link will take you to the chat.

I’ve been thinking a lot about all of the new subscribers who have joined Telos News since the Bamboo Series started, and two things occurred to me:

1) The series has been popular partly because readers enjoyed taking the story in as individual episodes that they could discuss, debate, and ask me questions about. It created a sense of community and gave me real-time feedback on what I was saying and how I was saying it. I made numerous writing decisions based on the responses that I was getting from all of you.

There are downsides to serialization—including that some reviewers will make sweeping conclusions about the project long before it’s finished—but, for the most part, this experiment has been rewarding.

And Substack has been ideal for this kind of journalism because the platform’s two core products—the email blasts and the social media tools—combine perfectly to publish and discuss a serialized work of non-fiction.

I want Telos to be a home for more of these kinds of series, both from outside journalists and from me, and that will be a big priority in 2026.

2) Telos now has tens of thousands of new subscribers who weren’t around when I first launched in April. And a lot of you don’t have a clear sense of what else it is that we write about around here. So I want to close out the year by introducing you to some of our best material from 2025, starting with a long investigative piece I wrote in April that is nearly as wild and weird as the Bamboo Series.

“Devin Nunes, Steven Biss, and the Laptop of MAGA Secrets” was originally published at over 9,000 words. I’ve decided to take down the original article and restructure it as a mini series for subscribers to enjoy through the end of the year. Dip in when you need a break from the family on Christmas. Check out a few episodes in the days before New Year’s Eve when you don’t want to work anyway.

The original piece was broken up into nine sections, and I’ve preserved that structure. I’ll send out the first dispatch later today, and then we’ll wrap up by Sunday or Monday.

The final installment of the Bamboo Series will land after this little interlude and before the new year. (Yes, I am partly doing this because I need a break from that story!)

In case you’re curious, the “Laptop of MAGA Secrets” received great feedback when it was first published. Here are some of the reader reactions from earlier this year:

• Telos subscriber Terri Taylor: “Better than an episode of Dateline.”

• Telos subscriber Mary Cowden: “I couldn’t put it down!”

• Steve Schmidt: “This is a mind-blowing story of abuse and legal, judicial and political corruption.”

• Gil Durán, former Sacramento Bee writer who knows the characters in the piece: “The insane story of [lawyer Steven Biss’s] downfall reveals much about how any broken grifter can play the MAGA game. Wild and revealing tale by Ryan Lizza.”

• Jacob Shamsian, Business Insider: “There is a SECOND LAPTOP FROM HELL and it belongs to a Trumpworld lawyer.” … “Just nuts.”

• Elise Labott, Cosmopolitics: “An extraordinary cautionary tale about how litigation is used as a political weapon against media critics, an approach now being expanded in the Trump administration.”

I’m thrilled to be bringing this article—now as a miniseries—to a much larger audience!

—Ryan