Tangle - I'd like to tell you a quick, remarkable story

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, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. This Friday, October 6th, this is a little bit of a different podcast episode. This is a Friday edition. We're sending it to everybody in the newsletter.

Starting point is 00:01:05 I wanted to read it to you, our loyal podcast listeners here on the mic. It is a personal essay, a little bit of a quick story about something that happened to me last week I wanted to share with you. We are going to be off on Monday for Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day, depending on where you are and what your government calls it. But we're off. It's a bank holiday. So we'll be back here on Tuesday. And before we go, I wanted to share this story with you. Last week, I got picked up by an Uber driver who looked far too old to be behind the wheel. As I got into the backseat of the car, he turned to take a look at me, stiffly shifting his entire upper body with his head like a quarter of the way toward the backseat so he could catch a glance

Starting point is 00:01:58 out of the side of his eye. Isaac, he asked in this raspy voice, yes, I said, immediately a little uneasy at the situation. The guy was driving what seemed like a brand new Tesla, but in his old age, he was hunched forward in a way that, from my perspective in the back seat, made it seem like he was looking through the steering wheel, not over it, at the road ahead of him. I was heading to Los Angeles airport for a red-eye back to Philly after a brief 36-hour trip to California where I was speaking on a panel about civic engagement. It was already past 9 p.m. and dark out. I was exhausted and had just got out of a two-hour-long networking dinner and was now a

Starting point is 00:02:36 little worried about my prospects of making it home. Once we started driving, I put my headphones in and pulled up the second Republican primary debate, which I had missed live and was covering in Tangle the next day on YouTube. For the next 30 minutes, I looked up anxiously anytime the driver hit the brakes or we changed lanes, fearful of an accident on Los Angeles' infamously congested highways. I typically strike up conversations with Uber or taxi drivers if they seem open to it, and I almost always find the stories or insights interesting and rewarding. Most people are a well of fascinating material if you ask the right questions, and for me it's often enlightening and entertaining to steer the conversation toward politics. But in this case, I was tired and cranky and had work to do, so I let my lazy side win and

Starting point is 00:03:21 convinced myself I was better off sitting quietly listening to the debate. But about 15 minutes out from the airport, something came over me. I can't say what exactly. Curiosity, maybe, or something a little less tangible. My concentration on the debate slipped, and despite having just spent the entire day talking, schmoozing, and speaking publicly, I felt this overwhelming urge to converse some more and decided to learn a little bit about the elderly man behind the wheel driving an Uber on Wednesday night. I pulled my headphones out and asked him if he liked Teslas, figuring that was as good of an entry point as any. He answered quickly, youthfully even, in a way that surprised me. He was enthusiastic, explaining that he loved the car, though he wasn't a fan of

Starting point is 00:04:05 driving Uber, even though he'd been doing it for more than a decade now. When I asked what he did for work before Uber, his response surprised me in the kind of way that makes you believe in the unseen forces at work all around us. I was a reporter, he said, all over Los Angeles all my life. I answered a little too loudly from the backseat, I'm a journalist too. And I saw a smile crawl across his face and watch as he shifted to attention. Then he started asking questions about Tangle and my work the way a good reporter would. I countered with my own questions, now myself hunched forward between the two front seats to hear him clearly and not miss a word. When I explained Tangle, he told me about a newsletter he used to write on the entertainment industry in the 1990s when email was still blossoming and all about his

Starting point is 00:04:49 career in the business covering entertainment and appearing on television. He told me he was the first anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles in the 1950s, a statement I had no reason to doubt but seemed so unbelievable given the circumstances that I didn't take it at face value right away. He was, as I suspected, quite old, 90 years old to be exact, though in good health, good enough to drive and make ends meet, something he was quite grateful for. Slowly, as we lobbed questions back and forth at each other, I started to get the feeling I was in the presence of a true great. It wasn't until I got out of the car and promptly googled him that I realized just how great. I hadn't just been picked up by some random reporter who had done a stint or two at the local newspaper. I was being driven to the airport by one of Los Angeles' most legendary broadcast journalists, the kind of guy who,

Starting point is 00:05:39 if he were selling tickets to come see him speak at an event, I would probably go. His name is Lou Irwin. In another twist, this also made the hair on my neck stand up as I'm currently working on a book about my long-lost uncle who went by the name Lou for many years. 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. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. When I got out of his car at the airport, I found Lou's Wikipedia page.

Starting point is 00:06:27 Among his many accomplishments, Irwin's pedigree is apparent in the fact that he has interviewed five presidents, Harry S. Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, whom he wrote a book on, Dick Clark, Frank Sinatra, David Bowie, and many others. As he told me in the car, he was, in fact, the original anchor and reporter at KABC-TV from 1957 to 1962. Then he was the news director at several Los Angeles radio stations and created the Credibility Gap in the 1960s, a satirical comedy team that combined music and political satire and grew a cult following through the 1970s. He also owned a news production company

Starting point is 00:07:24 and hosted a few nationally syndicated programss. He also owned a news production company and hosted a few nationally syndicated programs, including News Today and Earth News Radio. Before we broke off our conversation, I asked Lou if he was working on anything. As it happens, there were some renewed interests in a book he had published in 2013 called Deadly Times on the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times. The story is about labor union terrorists and a bombing at the Los Angeles Times headquarters that is still the deadliest attack in the history of the city, a historical event that 113 years later has been mostly forgotten. That morning, Lew had found out that the book might be optioned into a movie. A prospect,

Starting point is 00:08:01 he told me, might get me out of this car for the last few years of his life. And he was extra motivated, just a week or two before he had been assaulted by a drunken passenger who had punched him in the back of the head. The entire interaction was far too short, but it moved me deeply. Of course, there was something sad about seeing this gentleman with such a storied career stuck behind the wheel and still forced into gig work at the age of 90. But there was also something remarkable and uplifting about him. He was funny, light, a tad self-deprecating, but exuding confidence and as sharp as any 90-year-old I'd ever met. He was optimistic, looking forward to something, still had some fire in his belly. When he referenced a character in the book he wrote who was a notorious lawyer from that area, and I asked who the person was, he said, oh, you should really know that if you're a reporter. And I actually felt myself well up with embarrassment. 45 minutes earlier,

Starting point is 00:08:55 I was having derisive thoughts about this man and his age, and now I was caught with a deep inferiority complex. Life comes at you fast. I'm sharing this story not just because it was to me an incredible story full of lessons about strangers and media and our current economic moment and all the ways we judge people, but also because I want to help. I'm sharing this story to tell you to go get his book, as I did about five minutes after we met. It's available on Amazon and through Abe Books. It's called Deadly Times. There's a link to it in today's episode description. And my hope is that maybe if a few thousand of us buy it, we can help Lou get out of his car before the movie option comes through, even if it's just for a few weeks. And either way, the book looks fascinating. The

Starting point is 00:09:41 story sounds remarkable. It's probably worth the read. And the author is someone I think is very much worth supporting. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. I just wanted to use a day to share that story and tell you again, go buy Lou Irwin's book. It's called Deadly Times. If you like today's edition, don't forget that we release stuff like this on Fridays all the time. They typically are, you know, deep dives or original reporting on specific topics, but sometimes our Friday editions are transcribed interviews. Other times they're emails like this, personal essays, anecdotes, opinion pieces. We send them out as newsletters every Friday. You can subscribe, become a subscriber at readtangled.com, go to our membership page. We are also, I know I've been saying this for a

Starting point is 00:10:30 while, but we are also working on getting some paywalled versions of the podcast up. I know a lot of you only listen to the podcast and want access to the Friday editions. I assure you it is slowly and surely moving up our to-do list. We're a small team covering a lot of ground, but we have some stuff in motion on trying to make that happen. So, you know, that's coming down the pike and hopefully some of you guys will jump on board for that.

Starting point is 00:10:55 All right, that is it. We will be back here again on Tuesday because we're observing the federal holiday on Monday. Hope you guys all have a great long weekend for those of you who get Monday off. And we'll see you then. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Long. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager.

Starting point is 00:11:27 Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. 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 November 19th, only on Disney+.

Tangle - I'd like to tell you a quick, remarkable story

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