Tangle - I'm about to disappear (for a little).

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

We're rounding up the year and giving you an opportunity to tell us what you think.Take the survey: https://forms.gle/SiKB4mMtDMYVQ68w6Need a gift? Gift a subscription: https://tangle.outpost.pub/gift_subscription#/Or hit our merch store: https://cottonbureau.com/people/isaac-saulYouTube job opening: https://www.readtangle.com/otherposts/job-opening-youtube-editor/Social media intern opening: https://www.readtangle.com/tangle-internship-social/Advertise with us: https://forms.gle/tRmNXg6gYSRDSMrx6You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Today’s episode was edited by Zosha Warpeha.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

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 news from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and this is a little bit of a special end of the year Tangle podcast note. So yeah, without further ado, we're just So I'm here today to let you know that I'm going to be temporarily disappearing for a little bit from the podcast. Every year around this time, I use the holidays as an opportunity to take a break from Tangle. That break usually consists of planning the next year, catching up on emails, doing taxes, giving attention to the business part of this project,

a lot of the money stuff. This year, that break is going to be unusually long. We won't be sending our normal podcast out until January 9th, though there is some special podcast material coming up, but that is a little bit more than two weeks from now. There are a lot of reasons for this. The primary reason is that taking a break from the constant non-stop drumbeat of political news is very good for me to avoid burnout, and it helps ensure that

I can continue to deliver the best content possible for you every day for as long as possible. I love my job. This is literally my dream gig and I hope to do it forever. And while it's a cushy job in so many ways, indoors at a computer, in front of a microphone, or on the road talking to people, 12 hours a day of reading, writing, talking about politics, sometimes six days a week, it honestly takes a toll. The truth is that I'm exhausted and I need some time to recharge. So this year, the break is also especially critical for me for some more personal reasons. My wife, whose story I told earlier this year in a podcast and a newsletter, and there will be

a link to that in today's episode description in case you missed it, is just finishing her first semester of law school. Because of our schedules, we've barely gotten a chance to spend any time together since like late August, so I want to take advantage of her long winter break and catch up on some lost time. I also have the blessing of two new nieces arriving in the family recently, and I am hoping to get some uninterrupted time with them too. Perhaps most importantly, since this podcast is supposed to be a service to you, the listener, these breaks are also really good for you to keep yourself from going bonkers with anxiety or stress or anger or worry or many of the other feelings

that come up for people who care about our country and are very engaged politically. And you know, that goes for people from across the political spectrum. As I always say, I encourage you to take a break with us and try to unplug from the news this time of year. Things are typically quiet in Congress and around the country during the holidays anyway. In the next week or so, you're going to hear a lot about the massive omnibus bill Congress is going to pass, which we will cover when we're back, the January 6th committee and its Trump referrals, which we basically rounded up a couple months ago, and the fight for the Speaker of the House, which we covered yesterday.

My advice? Spend a couple weeks focusing on the things in front of you. You're really not going to miss much. And if you are one of our many readers or listeners who works in D.C., good luck. I hope Congress does its job and you get home in time for the holidays. I also want to use this moment to take stock of an incredible year. Tangle broke 50,000 subscribers on our mailing list. We've now surpassed 54,000 daily readers. We have over 8,000 paying subscribers generating more than $450,000 of annual subscription revenue. Our average open rates are 60 percent. We launched

ads in our free newsletter, which has given us a chance to feature some really cool partners and started a new revenue stream. On top of that, our podcast, this podcast, broke 550,000 downloads a few weeks ago. We are looking for advertisers for the newsletter and the podcast, too. If you're interested in advertising with us, there's a link in today's episode description, a little form you can fill out to do that, to inquire. If I could go back and tell myself three years ago as I sent the first Tangle newsletter to 50 friends and family that we'd be where we are today, well, I'd be astonished and grateful. And I am, both of those things. We also got some great press this year. Ghost, the platform that hosts Tangle Media, did a whole write-up about how we are leading the industry.

I appeared on a few big podcasts, including Trigonometry, to talk about our work. Allsides, an organization that assesses the political biases of prominent media outlets, did a small group editorial bias rating of Tangle and awarded us a rating of Center. They rated my personal bias as slightly left of center and with nuance, which I got a kick out of. This is a great compliment to our AdFont's media bias rating, which placed us slightly right of center with highly factual reporting and analysis. Here is an excerpt from the AllSides rating. language. Another article addressed left-wing criticism of right-leaning Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney, in particular their cries of fascism as overblown, while explaining the tension between the traditional Italian nationalists and the recent dominance of left-leaning politics

in the country. A panelist from the Center noted a strong analysis of arguments from the left and the right in this article about the lawsuit filed against former President Donald Trump by Letitia James. Most articles relied heavily on facts, such as this article about the lawsuit filed against former President Donald Trump by Letitia James. Most articles relied heavily on facts, such as this article about the pandemic, which distinguished between those who died from COVID-19 as opposed to those who died with COVID-19, a distinction the panel applauded, noting this distinction is not often made by other media outlets. All panelists noted the lack of sensationalism, spin, and slant in the headlines, which were straightforward. 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+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your

pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. It's super rewarding to see the little things about this work get noticed. So I just want to thank AllSides and their staff for the time and the effort it took to give us this rating. It was fair. It was enlightening. It was fulfilling. If you are listening to this, I'm proud to say I honestly believe you're on the ground floor of a fresh news model that is winning more and more people over every day.

Looking to the next year, there are a lot of exciting things coming up. Perhaps most notably, we are in the early stages of planning our first ever in-person event here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I will moderate a debate on a contentious issue between panelists and then host a meet and greet afterwards. Details on this are forthcoming, but if it goes well, we plan to get out and see more of you around the country. Second, I am now actively looking for a video editor to help us launch a YouTube channel where I plan to post one video a week and maybe even start sharing our podcast interviews in video format. If you are someone with editing skills who wants to be considered for the gig or you know someone else who is, please apply. I would love to pick somebody up from the Tangle community.

Bonus points if you can edit podcasts too. If there's something you want to see on the YouTube channel, email me at isaac at readtangle.com and let me know. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what we should cover. There is a link in today's episode description to the job application for the video editor position. Third, third, I'm going to grow our editorial team by bringing some of our part-time helpers into more well-defined or full-time roles, and by hiring another social media intern for the new year. So if you are currently in school, just graduated, or have some spare time, we also have a job opening for a social media intern. There's also a link to that opening in today's episode description. We are hoping to build out our partner network and perhaps

even a politically diverse little board of advisors to continue to drive the future of Tangle. It is all very, very exciting, and I'm really looking forward to what's coming in 2023. We are slowly morphing from one guy, me, and his computer to a full-fledged media business and media operation. Finally, right before and after the new year, we've got some awesome content for you. A roundup of our most read and most controversial newsletters, and then five full podcast interviews with mostly randomly selected Tangle readers and listeners. These interviews have been some of the most interesting interviews I've ever done, and they all took deep and unique turns. They're all very different from each other. And then the first week we're back, as I do each year, I'll be publishing a whole newsletter and

podcast on all the things I got right and wrong over the last 12 months, which is usually a reader favorite. Again, we're going to be coming back starting January 9th with all our normal content, but between now and then, you're just going to hear from us a few times, and it'll all be sort of different, unique stuff coming out of Tangle. coming out of Tangle. Most importantly, I've put together a brief end-of-the-year survey. This survey is also in our episode description. It's also in today's newsletter if you want to link to it. This survey is anonymous unless you opt to leave your email, and it's very important for a few reasons. First, it gives us a chance to better understand who's reading this newsletter and listening to the podcast, which helps us create the content you are looking for.

It also helps me get to know what kinds of people are most likely to enjoy Tangle. I do surveys like this a few times a year, and it has been really helpful to see how our audience is growing, how it's changing, what they do and don't like. It also allows us to be more precise in finding more readers like you when we go out and advertise in other places. Second, now that we are seeking out some partners to collaborate with, we can tell them more about the Tangle community. What percentage of our readers are more liberal? What percentage are under 18? How many live in the U.S. versus abroad? Who are we? That sort of thing. Third, it's an opportunity for you to give us feedback. The survey will include some proposed ideas for new content and help us gauge whether you would be interested in

it. It will ask what kinds of content you wish we covered more or less often. It will allow you to tell us about your biases and then rate our biases. And as always, there will be an open-ended section where you can share whatever you like, the good, the bad, the ugly, or somewhere in between. It is not long. I think the whole survey will take two or three minutes, which is about as long as it takes to read my take every day. So please, please, please consider helping us out. You can take the survey by clicking the link that is in our episode description, or by just opening today's newsletter and you'll see a bunch of links to it throughout. opening today's newsletter, and you'll see a bunch of links to it throughout. So quick roundup and a reminder. If you need a last minute gift for the holidays,

you can gift a Tangle subscription to someone. There's a link to do that in today's episode description, or you can buy something from our merch store. Also a link to do that in the episode description and today's newsletter. Spread the word over the holidays. Be sure to mention Tangle to friends, colleagues, and family. Take a break from the news. The news never ends. It's okay to step away from politics with us for a week or two. Don't forget to take the survey. Obviously, if you're not a Tangle member yet, please think about doing that. Thank you. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy holidays. Have a great new year. You'll be hearing from us soon. I really appreciate all the support. It's been an excellent year and yeah, many great things to come. So we'll be back soon. And I think you're going to like the content that we've got coming up. Have a great holiday. See you. Peace. Peace. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.tangle.com. We'll be right back. 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+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.