Tangle - A note to listeners from Isaac.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Starting point is 00:00:19 Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and today you're not going to be getting any views from across the political spectrum. I'm just doing my normal intro here.

Starting point is 00:01:08 I'm actually here with a little special Thanksgiving note. Last year, around this time, around Thanksgiving time, I wrote a post and did a podcast about gratitude and the power of giving thanks. Now, I know it sounds a little woo-woo and corny, but it's true, literally true from like a scientific perspective, that expressing gratitude is actually quite good for your mental health and I think just, you know, good for the world. So I wanted to quickly take today, where we're kind of entering a holiday week with us being off tomorrow and Friday for Thanksgiving, to just say thank you. with us being off tomorrow and Friday for Thanksgiving to just say thank you.

Starting point is 00:01:51 Right now, as I read this podcast script, media outlets across the country are suffering. Thousands of media jobs have been cut over the last few months, and many more cuts are coming. Warner Bros. and Disney are laying people off. CNN is restructuring. The company that owns CBS is cutting jobs, as is NBCUniversal. Protocol, an offshoot of Politico, just folded. Morning Brew, a business newsletter which is much bigger than Tangle, is laying off about 14% of its employees. Vice is planning to cut its costs by 15%. Gannett, the company that owns USA Today, fired 400 people in August, and now it says more cuts are coming. These are just a few places,

Starting point is 00:02:26 but they paint a pretty good picture of what's happening in the media space right now. For my entire career, moments like this, cycles like this, would lead to consternation, weeks of anxiety, lots of uncertainty, and of course, the pressure to drive more traffic or revenue to a website with my journalism. I'm thinking of and feeling for many of my former colleagues in the media world because cycles like this are just simply brutal to live through. But in the meantime, I'm also grateful. With Tangle, I have a steady stream of subscription revenue and a stable business model. I'm the boss and the one who gets to decide who or what gets cut. And despite a slow few months of growth, I have no plans except to try and keep

Starting point is 00:03:05 investing in this little media company we are building. To be in that mindset is a privilege, and it's not one I take for granted. It would not be possible without the people listening to this podcast. I'm also grateful for the next few days. In my family, Thanksgiving is the most important holiday of the year, so I will be logging off for a couple days to spend time with them and my childhood neighbors who we celebrate with every year. I recognize that many Americans spend the holidays working, or alone, or struggling to make ends meet, or all three. Please, be considerate about this in the days ahead and act accordingly. Be kind and generous. Show some love to your neighbors and to those in need of friendship, financial support, or simply a roof over their heads. In today's divided and

Starting point is 00:03:50 angry and fractured environment, our country needs this more than ever. With a few days off, I'd also like to encourage you to consider supporting Tangle. Of course, now is a great time to share Tangle. As I know, the holidays for many of you can be contentious with family members whose politics you don't share. One of the most surprising pieces of feedback that I've gotten in Tangle is hearing from so many people who say this podcast or the newsletter has helped them discuss politics with a parent, uncle, spouse, or other family member. I love that it can function in that way, and I encourage you to spread the word over the holiday break. One way to do that, in a similar vein to my note about the holidays, is to share the URL readtangle.com slash give. I'm going to have Trevor drop that URL in the episode description.

Starting point is 00:04:37 Every time someone signs up for our mailing list at readtangle.com slash give, we will donate $1 to No Kid Hungry or Meals on Wheels. Our idea is that we'd rather put money to a good cause than pay advertisers to push Tangle. So if our listeners or readers do that advertising for us, we can save the advertising money and donate it instead. Since we started this, just 31 people totaling $31 have signed up, which honestly has surprised me. I thought it'd be a lot more than that. My goal is to raise $1,000 through readtangle.give. I would love to just see what this community can do. So please, since this podcast is going to be much shorter than our others, you should have a couple more minutes than what you normally expect. Just share the URL on your social media, Twitter,

Starting point is 00:05:22 Facebook, LinkedIn, email it to five people, text it to five people, I don't care. Whatever you do, it would mean a lot if you did that for us. Less important, but nonetheless still noteworthy, is that we are also going to launch a three-day, 20% off Black Friday deal for Tangle memberships. This deal will be good until Friday evening. Reminder, being a paying subscriber unlocks Friday editions, 800 plus posts in our archive, gets you special updates on our business plans, and opens up the comments section. It also helps us keep this project going. Subscriptions make up 95% of our revenue. They pay my salary, they pay our staff, they allow us to invest in growing the podcast. You can claim that deal

Starting point is 00:06:01 with a link that is also in today's episode description. No matter what you do, I just want to reiterate my thanks. I'm feeling incredibly grateful this holiday season for Tangle, for this community, and as always for the roof over my head. I know that I share that sentiment with Trevor, who's plugging away editing this as we speak. We'll be back here on Monday, and I hope that you can enjoy some downtime between now and then. As always, I encourage you to use these next few days to take a little break from the political happenings too. I think it is always good for you to get some

Starting point is 00:06:34 separation from the craziness that can be our political world. Thank you, and we will see you Monday. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Sean Brady, and Bailey Saul. Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who designed our logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our website at www.readtangle.com. Thanks for watching! trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming

Starting point is 00:07:54 November 19th, only on Disney+.

Tangle - A note to listeners from Isaac.

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