Tangle - INTERVIEW: Manu Meel on bringing college students together.

Episode Date: February 12, 2023

Manu Meel is the CEO of Bridge USA, a nationwide movement on college campuses that aims to promote open discussion between students about political issues. Bridge is currently located on over 50 college campuses and 24 high school campuses in the U.S., with some 3,000 students engaged last semester. Today, we discuss political division, Manu’s story, and what it’s like trying to get students to talk about difficult issues together.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 and edited by Zosha Warpeha. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.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, the place we 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 I am very excited about today's guest. Manu Meal is the CEO of Bridge USA, a nationwide movement on college campuses that aims to promote open discussion on political issues amongst high school and college students. Bridge is currently located on over 50 college campuses in the U.S. and about 24 high schools with some 3,000 students who are

engaged in their work last semester. Manu, thank you so much for coming on the show. Isaac, thanks for having me, man. And I appreciate the introduction without all the hysterical nonsense. So let's hope to live up to that. I'm excited for the conversation. Yeah, that's always my goal. I love the work you guys are doing. I know there are some organizations out there that are kind of in this space, but I'd love to hear a little bit about you. I mean, whenever we have guests on, I try and give them a chance to give us a little bit of their backstory. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about how you came to this work and landed at BridgeUSA. Sure thing. And I'm sure the audience can relate to this a little bit in that I had no interest in politics, frankly. I was one of those, you know, disaffected,

like I was a pre-med student coming into college. I did not know anything about American democracy. My parents had immigrated to the U.S. in 98. I was born in New Jersey in December of 98, moved around a bunch. I lived in India for a while, like from the ages of one to five. The idea of politics, building an organization, all of that was anathema to me. Second semester of college at UC Berkeley, February 2017, we had a speaker by the name of Milo Yiannopoulos come to campus. And I don't know if you or the folks listening remember this, but it basically led to some of the largest protests in Berkeley's history since the 60s. And the next day, me and some random folks that are now some of my best friends building bridge with me basically just created a space on campus,

where like, hey, students are hurting, people, angry, there's a lot of hysterical nonsense flying around from the left, the right, in the middle, let's just create a space for common understanding and mutual tolerance. And that space became Bridge Berkeley, and then, you know, turn into Bridge Notre Dame and Bridge Colorado Boulder. And over time, we had this sort of organic movement on our hands. So that's how it started. The Milo story is a big, I think, a political genesis story for a lot of folks in different movements. This sort of tension between accepting free speech and where free speech sort of crosses into hate and the kinds of, you know, the policies and the tensions there. I'm curious, I mean, knowing that, where do you stand on someone like Milo showing up at a campus

and speaking? I mean, I imagine you have some kind of open-mindedness to it, given the work that you're doing, but I'd love to hear sort of how you thought about that event or how you think about that issue more generally. I love that we're getting right to the heart of the issue. So what's interesting about Bridge, I should say this first and foremost, is that we do not position or brand ourselves as a free speech organization. We specifically position ourselves as a movement of young people that are trying to promote open-mindedness, mutual tolerance, empathy, understanding for the other. Now, free speech is a very important component of that. But the reason why, as tolerance, empathy, understanding for the other. Now, free speech is a very important component of that. But the reason why, as you can imagine, Isaac, we don't immediately say we're a

free speech organization is because our politics has become so politicized that people are looking for those red flags, those herrings, you know, to either brand you as a conservative organization or a liberal organization. Our goal is to bet on people's ability to listen. So when it comes to my personal opinion of whether or not Milo should be involved or engaged on campus, I think, you know, the last five years have shown that when we respond to a speaker like that with extreme violence and protest, it actually oftentimes ends up doing the opposite. It ends up actually elevating their profile. I think part of the reason why you know about Milo is because of those protests that ended up elevating him so much.

My take on this is that the best way that we stitch together democracy with so many different perspectives and ideas is you've got to create space for the other to engage. And then you've got to meet that engagement with proper and effective discourse. I think that currently in our politics, we're very quick to shun folks. We're very quick to immediately silence, whether you're on the right, the left. And our objective is, can we create a space that's moderated for people to just exist? That's what we got to do. What does that look like in tangible terms for you guys? I mean, you're bringing kids together. I was about to correct myself, but I guess some of them kind of are kids, high school

students. You're bringing students together across the country who are, you know, sitting down in a classroom and talking face to face about political issues. I mean, how does this literally look? I'm curious. It literally looks like people talking to each other. And I know that it's funny and profound, but that is basically it. You know, when we started Isaac in 2017, afterwards, like 2018, 2019, people say, so what does this work look like? And I would try to add some like complexity to it and say that we would have moderated dialogues where students on the right and left come together and we'll facilitate a very targeted conversation. And the idea is to depolarize the room. And very quickly, what I started realizing

was that the amount of spaces for people to just talk to each other that aren't social media in the real world are rapidly vanishing. And in fact, when you look at the history of the United States from like the Tocquevillian perspective, American democracies are required spaces, civic associations, where people can just listen, engage, hear each other. And that is what a bridge chapter is. I don't like to dress it up with all of sort of the BS and nonsense of high falutin language. Really, it is a space for young people from across the political spectrum, and oftentimes who don't fit a label, conservative or liberal, but they just have many beliefs. And for them to be able to understand and engage in sort of an exercise of just

knowledge creation. And so simply put, it'll often be students organize a group, let's say on a smaller campus, it's like five students and on a bigger campus, it's 20 to 30. They bring together a larger group discussion where 40 to 50 students will show up and they have a dialogue about an issue that might be either locally relevant or culturally relevant at that moment. And that is it. The last thing I'll say is the reason why this is so profound is two reasons. One is I think we oftentimes forget that democracy not only requires strong institutions, but it requires strong norms, norms of mutual tolerance, reciprocity, institutional forbearance, all of those that are rapidly vanishing. And the second thing is that we forget that the core unit of our democracy is people like you and I. I know it's, again, shocking, but if people don't have the skills

and ability to handle difference, then the project that our ambitious experiment is trying to pursue is just, it's moot. It's not possible unless we understand how to deal with people that are different than us. I'm curious, you know, in your experience, I mean, I understand, say there's 3000 students who are kind of engaged in some of what you guys have put together over the last semester that you don't necessarily talk to all of these people or get to engage all of them. But what's your impression of why students decide to step into BridgeUSA? I mean, what are they looking for? Why are they coming to you? Because, you know, I'm, it's interesting, I guess I'll preface it by saying it's interesting in my work, I find that there's very different reasons for why people on the right or people

on the left listen to Tangle or read Tangle. Oftentimes, folks on the right come to us because they have a general distrust for mainstream media, which is distrust. I certainly understand. I mean, it's part of the reason why I created what I did is because I think there's something broken about that. And then on the left, it's often people who are like, I can't understand why somebody would vote for Donald Trump. And I want to better understand what the other side's position is. So I mentioned like these in-person conversations, what you're seeing and why you feel like it happens the way it does. I think part of it is certainly actually the success of what you've experienced at Tangle. You know, people that listen to this podcast, people that read your newsletter, they're curious about why the other

believes what they believe. But I think broadly, when it comes to our campuses, we have chapters at schools, you know, as different as UC Berkeley and Notre Dame, you know, Stony Brook University in Long Island and St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas. Broadly put, honestly, the biggest reason why people show up is because most people in this country, we did a recent poll, 87%, most people want to have a democracy where they feel heard, where they feel like people that are different than them acknowledge their existence, and where they don't feel like they have to be walking on eggshells when politics comes up. Anytime you're sitting, whether it's the subway station or you're talking to your neighbor or you go down to the grocery store and something

political comes up or the TV's playing something, you're like, oh my God, it's politics. Like I do that. Oh, and everybody tightens up. And honestly, that's a big reason why people show up, man. You know, they want a civic space in society where they can show up without judgment. And importantly, not just say whatever's on their mind, but say it in a constructive way. Have someone else either respond, agree, disagree, and then carry on. That's it. People are very apathetic, I think, towards our politics these days because our politics have become sort of tribal. I think that folks are looking for that community. I think folks are looking for a solution to a feeling of alienation. But at the core, it's that we as people are social beings and we want spaces where we can feel heard and feel like people are ready to listen and accept us.

And that's about it. Again, Bridge's success thus far has just been a bet on human nature. And it's just about meeting the demands of we as people. Well, one of the questions I get most often in Tangle is people asking me for advice about how to speak to somebody whose politics they disagree with. You know, a lot of emails I get are a grandfather saying, you know, his granddaughter is extremely liberal and woke and he doesn't know how to talk to her anymore and they fight or, you know, the reverse, somebody saying their uncle is a big Trump supporter and they just can't understand how he can support somebody like that and they want advice on how to speak

to them. I'd love to hear how you frame these discussions to people who are attending, because for me, my work feels easy in the sense that, you know, I'm sharing my own views and I'm collecting these opinions from the right and the left, but I'm not asking people who really strongly disagree to sit down, you know, two feet from each other and kind of have it out. And that part always sounds really challenging to me. So what do you tell people coming into these conversations about, you know, how they should be approaching them or thinking about them?

This is this is funny, because this is where our work almost crosses into the world of therapy, right? What does what does what does our what does? How should I talk to my uncle, you know, at Thanksgiving? I'll challenge and propose two sort of notions here. One is that when we think about political conversation across lines of difference, the immediate caricature that comes to mind is two people, a hundred units apart on the political spectrum. When in reality, most people in the country are maybe 30 units apart. most people in the country are maybe 30 units apart. So like, yes, all of us have a crazy uncle, right, or a crazy aunt, or, you know, our grandfather that's sort of mired in a certain decade that we don't understand. But when you poll most Americans, most Americans are largely

in agreement with both the problems and potential solutions to many issues in our society. When I do road trips, I'll often like drive around the country like a crazy person, just like wanting to understand what are people thinking and saying. And my most recent road trip was from Austin to Boston. You know, I went through Texas and Louisiana and Georgia and South Carolina and up all the way up to Boston. And, you know, people, conservative pastors in Georgia, you know, Black activists in Selma, Alabama, students in Austin, everybody was like, I want a family that, you know, supports me. I want a country that cares about me and I want a job that, you know, gives me some dignity.

That's basically, you know, the widespread span of most humans. So I think the first thing is a challenge, this notion that when you're about to engage in conversation, it's not like your conversation is going to be with Donald Trump and like AOC. The second thing to recognize and understand is that when our politics are engaged, we have to meet people where they are. We have to listen to listen rather than to respond. And so I think that when we think about our politics in that lens, we have to understand that most humans and most society members are just looking to be acknowledged. So when you lead with acknowledgement and not combat, it's very powerful. But that's the first thing is, again, is that you and I, Isaac, I don't know much about your politics. I doubt that you and I are a hundred units apart. I don't know anything about you. I mean,

beyond the work that you do, you know? Yeah, no, I don't imagine we are. And I think that's like an interesting framing, because I do think a lot of people feel that way and view the world that way or view their fellow countrymen that way. I think there's a lot of interesting data I've seen, at least, you know, where there seems to be a strong correlation between how people feel about certain groups, whether demographic or political or whatever, versus what their exposure to those groups are. negative feelings about Muslim people have like never met a Muslim person. There's like a lot of research and data about things like that. So I love the idea of the kind of exposure will breed some sort of understanding, which I think is definitely the ethos behind Tangle a little bit. A lot of the times I confess, even though I frame what we're doing as nonpartisan or our work is nonpartisan, I have a very skeptical eye whenever I see, you know, the label nonpartisan or nonpartisan organizations, mostly because I think it's really hard to get people under the same roof who are from across the political spectrum. I'm interested, like, what kinds of people you actually see come in the door, you know, I mean, I know a lot of groups who do this work. who do this work, they end up with just like moderates on both sides, like people who are just a little slightly left of center, a little slightly right of center. And I'm curious if you've been able to find a way to get people who are really maybe are closer to 100 units apart

in that same room for conversations like this. So let me take a step back on that question, which is something you said that's very important. You know, you mentioned that most people often have different perceptions about people, especially when they don't interact with them. There are so many studies that have demonstrated that we overestimate how extreme the other side is. Right now, if you're listening and I ask you, name three words that come to mind when you think of a Republican, right? Or list three words that come to mind when you think of a liberal. Those words are very rarely actually reflective of what the average Republican or liberal believes, or a Democrat or Republican believes. So that's one thing to always check in these conversations. I think you're 100% right. And I think the work that you're doing at Tangle is a great example

of the work that needs to be happening to sort of challenge our assumptions. When it comes to the broader question of just like how we're actually engaging and expressing, I think that most students, when we engage with them on campus about our sort of political beliefs, and when they're thinking about the sorts of engagements that we're talking about, we need to challenge those assumptions. And I think when it comes to challenging those assumptions, that challenge is to be met in a variety of ways. And part of that is the media diet that we're consuming. And part of it is the engagement that we're having. You know, going forward, I mean, you say you have

these 3000 students who are involved in the last semester, what are you guys hoping to come out of this? I mean, is the idea like a movement that spreads across campus where we are just, you know, piling up more and more students who are really open-minded and willing to have these difficult conversations? Is there some sort of political transformation you're hoping for? I mean, I wonder like what the sort of big grand end goal is in terms of change you might see specifically among, you know, high school and college age students, which seems to be the target here. There's three pieces to that answer. The first actually goes back to what you just said earlier, which is criticizing the term

nonpartisan. what you just said earlier, which is criticizing the term nonpartisan. 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.

Partisan just means someone that believes something. You know, that's like the Webster dictionary definition of what it is to be a partisan. I would be lying to you right now if I told you that my beliefs are completely agnostic and I'm nonpartisan. In fact, when it comes to our vision for our politics, it is not at all to suppress or moderate. In fact, some of the students that are showing up are extraordinarily partisan in their liberal or conservative beliefs. The battle that we're fighting is a battle of temperament. It's not what belief you're exercising, it's how you're exercising that belief. It's not where are you showing up, it's how are you showing up.

You can show up to a bridge discussion believing that we need to build a wall and we need to have absolute free speech or that we need to have complete amnesty for everybody and that you need to open the borders to folks that might be undocumented. The question is, how are you exercising? So that's the first vision. The second piece of our vision is that I think that the United States at this moment, and the reason why I'm so optimistic and hopeful about our country, is that the experiment that we're embarked on is an experiment that is unprecedented in the scale of human history. We're the most diverse

democracy society's ever seen. We're going through technological change at a pace that we've never seen before in human history. And we're going to have economic disruptions and inequality to the levels that we've never seen before. Those three facts mean that if you're trying to build this multiracial experiment, you've got to show up with a proper sort of bridging temperament. And then the third vision is that when it comes to students and when it comes to young people, The leaders of tomorrow, if they continue to adopt the politics of today, I think we're on this sort of downward spiral political arms race that I think your audience is sick and tired of. We have to create an upward spiral of progress, civic engagement, and discourse. And the only way you do that is by building a grassroots movement

of people. But the most important thing, if none of that made sense, is hammer down to the fact that we're not fighting a battle of ideological compromise. It's a battle of temperamental moderation. And those are two different things. We're not fighting on the x-axis left, right. We're fighting on the y-axis, which is crazy people at the top and totally disengaged at the bottom. Our job is to get the temperamental middle anywhere on the political spectrum. And my wager is that that's most of Americans. In fact, our latest poll says it's 87%. Yeah, I love that reframing of it. I mean, I often tell people, you know, the experience of Tangle is not to moderate your views. We're not asking you to kind of come here and leave your views at home. In fact, reading Tangle every day might make you more partisan one direction or the other

because you hear arguments from the other side and you say, wow, those are even less convincing than I thought initially, which I don't think is an experience that happens for a lot of readers, but I think it's definitely an experience that does happen for some. I'm curious, from your experience engaging in this stuff,

have there been memorable moments for you where you felt like, oh, maybe this could actually work because you seem very optimistic about it. I would say that I think a lot of Americans are feeling very pessimistic, especially about the political divides in our country. What have you seen in terms of how this plays out with students in the real world that makes you feel like this is a productive endeavor to be on? Well, one is the advent of new information arenas like Tangle, like the work you're doing. The amount of increased engagement I've seen in this field of people that are trying

to bridge build, that are trying to provide new sources of media information, the folks that are trying to create more effective media literate people, the way that I think you describe your mission, which is not to create some sort of moderate newsletter, but to simply equip the readers with information on both sides in as neutral of a perspective as possible. I think that's really important. And that gives me hope. The second thing about hope and optimism is to recognize that the most hopeful and optimistic people sometimes feel very pessimistic. And I think, you know, when it comes to our political moment, there are many times

that I worry and fear that the experiment that we're currently pursuing with American democracy is one that could be too difficult. But here's why I'm incredibly optimistic. And here's here are three things that anybody in your audience can pursue, regardless of your economic means or sort of your political perspective, that'll help you, I think, reignite your faith in the experiment that we're pursuing. First is literally make a list of three people that are in your neighborhood that you pass all the time, but have never had a conversation with it could be a grocer, it could be a door person, it could be the mailman. And just like be like,

how's your day going? What are you up to? What's going on in your life? And then just like, what do you believe in the thing? It is shocking how many times we hear people say like, my perspective on the world is entirely filtered through Twitter, which isn't a real space, and it should instead be filtered through real humans. The second way to claim optimism is to understand that the problems that we experience, while tragic and systemic and very difficult, are completely expected. If I told you that there's this society out there, and's consists of 330 million people. It has diversity like most societies have never experienced. It's experiencing technological change at a scale that we've never experienced. It's embarked on this idea of a multiracial democracy that's never

existed. And then I told you, oh, by the way, it's going blissfully and they're not experiencing any problems. You'd be like, really? The moment that we're going through has to be normalized, not to be complacent, but to place the problems in perspective. And the third thing is go read a newsletter like Tangle or go to a bridge chapter or go to the local church or go to your local community center and start reinvesting in people. I think the more and more we digitize our lives, the more and more we lose touch with our average daily people and citizens. If there's one thing that I could give you as a takeaway from this podcast, it's take action in your daily life. And that action can produce a lot of optimism. I know that was a bit long winded, but I just wanted to frame this entire optimism question

on this feeling that we're, we're like, we're critiquing a moment and we're pessimistic about a moment that when you frame historically, I get it. I get why it's difficult. I love saying in my writing and also just talking with people that I think politics is personal. And more people than I think we admit make their decisions and form their political beliefs based off of the experiences that they have in their real day-to-day lives. There's no doubt spaces like Twitter are having a big influence on, I think, a small slice of the population. But most people aren't reading about crime statistics and feeling like those statistics

change their mind about what they're experiencing in their actual neighborhood, what they're seeing firsthand. I'm curious for you specifically, I guess on a personal note, being an immigrant, first-generation immigrant in the United States, being somebody who I presume you're not that far along graduated from college. You look pretty young to me. Our podcast listeners can't see you. But what about your personal experience has made you feel this kind of optimism, made you feel like this country we're living in is both complex, but also worth saving, I guess you could say? It's not only worth saving, but if we pull this off,

in Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson's words, America will have done something for humanity that is the definition of the ideal. We will have built a multiracial democracy that truly represents people. That is insanely amazing. That is an achievement. Thousands of years, people have been striving for. That's huge. That's something to get excited about. And I am grateful to wake up, to work with other young people that are excited about that. Like if that doesn't excite you, I don't know what does. It's like that and going to Mars. But directly in response to your question, I love that because I think that our personal stories and experiences really offer a lot. You know, I learned about you, Isaac, that you're from Bucks County. I bet that being from a county so politically divisive probably played a role in how you perceive different people. I was, as I said earlier, born in December of 98 in New Jersey.

I then lived in India from the ages of one to five in a village while my parents lived in the US. I lived with my grandparents northeast of Delhi, came back. I moved every two years. I finally went to college in Berkeley. I graduated in 2020, so I'm 24, I guess. My entire life was one of adaptation, meeting new people, sacrificing my sense of self-importance to let other people exist, understanding that whether you're white, Black, Indian, Latino, an immigrant, a citizen, almost all of us have a weird reaction to difference when we experience it and meet it. And so my entire life was one of adaptation and empathizing. And to me, bridge building, which sounds like kumbaya to many people, was a survival strategy. It was a way to navigate the world. And I think as we continue to further diversify the country, as we continue from a very multi-partisan perspective to chart out what vision do we want for our country,

it's most important to realize that ultimately the core of democracy is the people. And my job is to help people navigate a world of difference. And if we can do that, I think we've gone a pretty far enough way to realizing that ultimate ambition that America is trying to perceive and pursue. You're winning me over here with your high-minded ideals. I suppose I'm your target audience, so I'm on board. I'm very curious about what BridgeUSA has planned in the next year, the next five years, what kinds of things you're hoping to see in terms of growth of the organization and expansion on other campuses, all that good stuff. Hey, we got to get the Tangled newsletter in front of folks. I'm excited about that. I'm going to growth of the organization and expansion on other campuses, all that good stuff. Hey, we got to get the Tangled newsletter in front of folks. I'm excited about that. I'm going to go ahead and read what you I think I just looked at your website. The most recent one was about the Chinese spy balloon. Yeah. Which by the way, the fact that that was our dominant news story

for the last three days, it's like we're living in some Black Mirror episode. Really for bridge right now we're in 50 college campuses, 20 high schools. Objective over the next two years is to get 250, 250 college chapters and high school chapters. Operationally, that's our objective because we think that that provides us enough momentum and enough young people to actually start flipping the narrative. From a cultural sense, it's to empower the person that's listening to this podcast, the person that is probably in line with most other Americans in this country, a person that's pissed off, annoyed about the direction of our discourse, the inability for us to understand each other, and to help them see that

actually you are most of America, that Twitter, the content on Twitter is produced by 10% of total Twitter users. And there's about 9 million users on Twitter, which means that approximately 1 million people are dictating how 330 million people perceive the country. That's insane. So operationally 250, culturally shift the narrative, and most importantly, to empower people that are listening to podcasts like this and to show them that they're actually the majority and that importantly, they have to be loud about the temperament. Again, not the ideology. You can believe whatever it is that you want to believe. That's important. Our values matter. To your point,

we're all partisans. Literally means you just believe things. But the question is, how are you expressing your beliefs? I love it. Manu Neal, thank you so much for the time. If people want to keep up with BridgeUSA, follow your guys' work, support you somehow, what's the best way to do that? BridgeUSA.org. Check out my Instagram, Twitter. You can Google us. And most importantly, just when you go online and if you're a young person and you want to get involved, think about starting a chapter. Awesome. I love it. Manu, thank you so much for the time. Good luck with your work and I hope to be in touch. I think there's a lot of stuff here we could work on together. Thanks, Isaac. by Zosia Warpea. Our script is edited by Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and Bailey Saul.

Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly, and our social media manager, Magdalena Vakova, who created our podcast logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75.

For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.tangle.com. We'll see you next time. 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.