Tangle - PREVIEW - The Sunday Podcast: Isaac and Ari talk Amish culture, Greenland, and Los Angeles.

Episode Date: January 12, 2025

Please enjoy this preview episode of our Sunday podcast. The full editions are available exclusively for premium podcast members. To become a member, please go to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up. In this episode, Isaac and Ari, and Jon talk about Amish culture, Trump's designs for Greenland, and the wildfires in Los Angeles. They also play a Tangle-based trivia game. And last but not least, the Airing of Grievances. 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 and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coming up, talk a lot about the Amish weirdly and some hot takes on Trump's Greenland plan, the LA fires, we play a game and some very good grievances today where both Ari and I have two things each to complain about because we've been off for too long. You guys are going to enjoy this one. 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, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, in freezing cold Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, recording this on Thursday, January 9th, back from our lengthy Christmas New Year's break here with Ari

Weitzman, our managing editor. Ari, welcome back to the saddle, man. Thanks. It's great to be here in a very wintery and lovely and cold, but not bad, New England winter. I think it's great to be covered in snow right now. How cold is it in Philadelphia? We're negative. Sorry, negative. We're at 23 degrees with like 13 degrees colder feel like whatever, because of the wind chill. I think it's the feels like is 13. Yeah, it's frigid. I would say I'm still in the phase where I'm liking it. I haven't been cold for long enough where I'm just like, it's really in my bones.

It feels refreshing still to step outside. I had a, this, I had a almost, I would say a nearly transformative experience over break. I spent my Christmas break in Amish country. Okay. Incredible, man. Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I hadn't been in years,

probably since I was fresh out of college. And I forgot how incredibly beautiful, first of all, how incredibly beautiful it is. It's right outside Philly, like an hour outside Philly. We rented an Airbnb for the holidays, me and Phoebe's family. Obviously I'm a Jew, but I get Christmas now because I'm married and non-Jew, so that's fun. Obviously, I'm a Jew, but I get Christmas now because I'm married and non-Jew, so that's fun. Yeah, same. And it's just rolling, beautifully taken care of, small farms. Not these giant, you can't see the end of them, corn farms, like 10 cattle, some horses, some goats, and then just a small cornfield, and all throughout

Pennsylvania. Then the Amish are just... I know there's some bad press around the Amish. I kind of think it's BS. I feel like every sect of people has some dark stuff going on, especially these more insular communities. There have been stories about, I think a woman came out of the Amish community who said she had been the victim of rape or incest. And then that whole Amish community is just like, oh, it's

riddled with rape and incest. I'm like, I don't really know if that's true. Every community in America has these issues. I like these people. I'm standing on ground for the Amish. They are pacifist, kind, friendly, open door type people. They're all so committed to not subscribing to modernity are a lot of them are offline. Their whole lives revolve around like manual labor and woodworking and working the land. And I was really moved by it, man. It was like a cool week to just go out there and be out of the city and be in this different world. Met a few of the Amish people who came by our Airbnb, you know, waved to the kids we have, offered to give them a ride in the horse and buggy. And we feed their goats with the little two

and four-year-olds we have in the family. And it was really nice. I have some Amish documentaries I wanna watch now. I was also drinking raw milk all week. Not that scared of bird flu, whatever, but brought home some raw milk propaganda from the Amish farmers market, really into raw milk propaganda right now. There's a lot of big stuff happening in my world on the backs of Christmas.

Why are you shaking your head? Because I didn't expect to have to get into all of this right away. I remember it was not in the show notes, but that's fine. We'll talk about the Amish a little bit. I remember when I was 15 years old, one of my defining life experiences was that I had that tumor in my small intestine when I was a kid. I remember going into the hospital and frequently as I'd be going in and out before surgery as they were getting me ready for the weeks of recovery to come and this event itself, going in and out of the automatic doors past

Amish people in the hospital, which seems like a bit of a contradiction always did to me that we can have these little communities that insist on their way of life and don't want to be subject to the authoritative overreach of our government and the taxation that we impose until they need the services that modernity applies and then it's a whole different ballgame. I think it's very common for us to respond to communities that we don't usually interact with that eschew modernity, whether it's the Amish or any other group by fetishizing them as closer to the land and idyllic and pure, but every human community is a human community and it always has its own flaws, trade-offs and costs. As much as we can say the reports about abuse in Amish communities

were overblown, I'm sure they're still real. I think that set of communities still has its own issues as much as it has its benefits as well. Raw milk is a good example. That's something that has a lot of biotics, probiotics included in it, but also has risks of bacteria and infection and lack of self-stability. There's trade-offs that you get with participating in modernity. You can do it in part sometimes, but other times when you make it your whole community's ethos and then you go to the hospital that you don't want to pay taxes for, that's when I start to have some issues. Wow. Amish hit piece, huh? You're just upset they want to go get some help. I just want to push back on this propaganda you're trying to like pedal right off the bat here.

You're definitely, if like when you're talking about how the Amish, and this is true, I read about this when I was out there, how they resist taxation and dodge a lot of the government regulation. I mean, amen, brother. I'm in church. I love that about them. They're so old school. We're not even on the books. Just don't even come knocking on our door if you're the IRS.

Don't knock on the hospital store then. That's my response. Let's be consistent. Here's something for you on raw milk. I'm lactose intolerant. I would say I'm in denial about being lactose intolerant. I'll put it that way. I still have cheese and ice cream and stuff, and I don't drink milk because if I have a glass of milk, like I really do feel super sick, but I can like take a few lactate pills and have a bowl of ice cream and just like feel crappy for a day, but it's worth it for the ice cream. And I kind of do that pretty regularly. But when we were in Amish country and I consumed some raw milk propaganda pamphlet and then

bought a gallon of raw milk from this incredible small like three person run farm stand, I drank this whole gallon of raw milk and it didn't upset my stomach at all. Can you explain that to me? I'm not the diet guy. Like, I think as much as I, There's so many things where somebody can explain. Somebody listening to this knows the answer. If you know the answer to why a lactose intolerant person can drink raw milk from, I think it was like 8282 cows or so, I forget what, there's like the grades of cow that the milk comes from. And I'm totally fine, but my whole life, if I have a glass of milk, I get incredibly sick.

I would love to know the answer to that question, but I'm a big raw milk guy now. It's good for your teeth, the pamphlet taught me that. I think milk is good for your teeth. Shut up. I don't know that. You didn't understand the raw milk. Yeah, there's no calcium in milk unless it's raw for sure.

I think there's always purists who will develop some diet ideology based on one thing or another. There are people that are pro-raw milk who would also say we shouldn't be drinking dairy at all and it's unnatural for us to have any sort of milk after we are babies. We aren't meant to consume any lactation of some other animal. I think it's all kind of BS. There are people who say we shouldn't be eating bread because it's processed grains. And I think anything that is nutrients that we develop the ability to process is fair game. And I'm not, like I said, I'm not the diet guy. I'm not evangelical about any of this stuff. I'm blessed by not having to pay attention to it because I don't have a whole lot of dietary restrictions

biologically naturally. But maybe if I did, I'd be a little bit more focused on stuff. I'm blessed by not having to pay attention to it because I don't have a whole lot of dietary restrictions biologically naturally. But maybe if I did, I'd be a little bit more focused on it. I know that there are people who drink raw milk who are fine. And I know that there are people who drink processed pasteurized milk who are fine. And I guess I just don't care enough. If you want to be the raw milk dude, go for it and let's start learning this answer together. Let's go on this journey together. Yeah, I will say I did. I was sucking down a glass of raw milk and got a push notification from the New York Times about bird flu at the same time like last week and I was like, huh. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. All right, pop quiz. Do you think the Amish voted, supported Trump in Pennsylvania this year or were opposed

to Donald Trump in Pennsylvania this year? Good question. I guess like the lurking question there is how much do they vote? Can I ask a clarifying question before I give my answer? Sure. Did they vote in similar proportions as the rest of the population around them in those counties? I don't know the answer to that question,

but they voted more in 2024 than they voted in 2020, is something I'm reading right now as we speak. Man, that's so hard because I don't know what kind of information they're getting. I don't know how they're basing their decisions. I guess just to make the most derivative, simple, like two brain cells rubbing against each other to get an answer kind of response that I can give you, I'd say for Trump, just because rural pushing against taxation, like those are the trend lines. Yeah. According to the supremely unreliable, and I would not use this as a news source, the Times of India dot India times dot com. The experts on the Mennonite communities and the Amish.

The Amish broke for Trump in huge numbers in Pennsylvania after not really supporting him in 2020. A big reason why was that there was a government raid at Amos Miller's raw milk farm in Birden Han, Pennsylvania last January. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture had received reports of illness linked to raw dairy products sold at the farm and launched an enforcement action. And it drove a huge backlash. And so I took that and plugged it into Google. And now there's a bunch of stories from PBS and Cincinnati Inquirer and The Telegraph

about Donald Trump courting the Amish and how much they loved him in 2024. And the New York Post, how Trump won Pennsylvania's Amish vote with the help of missionaries and Elon Musk. So man, there's a lot there. We should maybe, well, whatever. We'll save the Amish stuff for now. There is a lot there. That's something that I've always wanted to do is sort of break into the different cultural

divides within the Amish community, like the idea of the chrome bumper Amish being a little bit more permissive of technology. It is odd to imagine a kind of coalition of people that includes Elon Musk and the Amish. I think they can imagine two people more opposed on the technology spectrum. One of the guys I met when I was out there, one of the Amish guys I met,

he owned the house that we were staying in. He said the Amish are in black and the Mennonite are in gray, and that's a good way to distinguish them when you're in Pennsylvania Amish country and that they're a little bit more permissive and the Amish are a little bit more restrictive. But at the end of the day, they're all about pacifism, work in the land, and humility before God, and I can get down with all those things. So everybody in the family is making fun of me about how moved I was by my experience there. I was getting sucked into the community. Jared Sussman I've always appreciated this aspect of your personality, honestly. I think it makes

you good at what you do. Anytime you visit a new place, you're in with a new culture, you're like, what's this all about? I love it. You love it before you get the answer. And then once you get the answer, you want to support it and understand it and empathize as much as you can. I think it makes you a good reporter. Seriously. Thanks. I appreciate it. Well, speaking of the Amish and Trump winning, we're in Trump world, man. It didn't take long. He hasn't been inaugurated yet, but it feels like 2016 to me in a very specific way, which

is like, we are just talking about Trump buying Greenland, changing the name of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America, and making Canada the 51st state. I don't really care. You can feel however you want to feel about Trump. The guy is a well of these unbelievably bombastic, crazy, like a fox, so stupid it just might work ideas. And just like the stuff that he is capable of putting out and mainstream.

I mean, I just don't know if there's anybody like him. And I'm truly not saying that as like a criticism or a compliment. It's just like, I can't believe that it is January 9th. He has not even been inaugurated yet. And I am spent hours reading about the strategic implications of us like invading Greenland. And like, that's just where we are. That is where we are now. It's an interesting turn because if I am just like not hearing anything about

Trump for two weeks and I'm sitting out sitting here a week before his inauguration and I open my notebook up that says like Trump campaign promises for 2025 and I flip through it. I get to the section on foreign policy. The first notes that I would have in my notebook are to the section on foreign policy. The first notes that I would have in my notebook are promised to get peace between Israel and Gaza and peace between Ukraine and Russia before taking office. That's the first line. I will then bring my head up, turn my microphone on to talk about it or fire up the computer to write something. The stories I get are, should the US take Greenland? Should we turn the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America? What about the Panama Canal, Canada, the 51st state? It just shows how good he is at playing the liberals' media like a fiddle and the mainstream

press like a fiddle because I'm sure people were ready to write those stories, but instead, they're writing these because they're more interesting and we're talking about them. So good job for him because last I checked Russia and Ukraine are still at war and not a lot of people are saying, where's the plan? What are we going to do about that? Instead we're asking, what's the Trump doctrine Gulf of America thing, to me, this is such a stupid waste of time. To answer the questions that I've gotten about this, yes, if he wanted to, I mean, it's totally possible we could change the name of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf. There's

agencies for that and he could invest political capital in doing that. I don't think he's gonna actually do that But like it's just who cares kind of from my perspective It's just like it would be silly to waste time on it. It's been named the Gulf of Mexico for like I think 400 years I don't know why I do that Canada obviously not becoming the 51st state anytime soon They're about to have a new prime minister who I think could get along very, very well with Trump potentially. And is also somebody who like, I don't know, I think he's got the pulse of the country and at least the moment in North American politics right now. So we'll see how that goes. My sort of hot take, I guess, for the day, because I'm not even seeing many conservatives

say this. I'm sure some are, but I just haven't seen it as a dominant narrative. I kind of think Trump's right about the Greenland thing. Just like in a vacuum, if we could acquire Greenland in a peaceful manner, it would be worth the investment. I know it sounds so ridiculous. This would fall in the category of one of the things that I love about Donald Trump is,

there is just no other politician who would mainstream this. To be clear, there are politicians in the past who have suggested and pursued a purchase of Greenland or US getting territorial control over it. This is not a new idea. This was happening like the 1800s. But in the last 30 years, of all the politicians that we have who are just buttoned up mainstream, trying to be seen as reasonable, smart, thoughtful people. They'd all be so scared of something like this. And this is the kind of thing where Trump is crazy like a fox. And I think there's actually a really good, strong argument that he's making that we should be

thinking about in a serious way. And I don't think it's that ridiculous. Obviously, I don't think we should take Greenland by force. That goes without saying. But like, strategically, it is placed in a very, very, very important spot between us and Russia. There is a reason that China is investing a ton in Greenland right now, and it's because they want inroads there. As the Arctic ice melts,

they're to be shipping routes that open up that are going to be so, so, so vital for the global shipping world, infrastructure pathways that if we had control over, that would obviously be better for us in a nationalistic way than if Russia had control over it or China had control over it. We already have a military base there. And all of this is to say nothing of the thing that is just, I mean, it worries me because I don't really want it to happen, but it's realistic, is that there's this huge reserve of minerals there that we need for batteries, the largest in the world. And this is not me suggesting we go plunder Greenland for natural resources, which is

a genuinely horrifying prospect to me given all the things that are happening environmentally on the planet right now. And in terms of renewable energy, this is a scary future to think about is the seafloors and the minerals and all this stuff we're going to have to extract to make solar and better batteries happen. But I'm not the only one who knows there's a huge mineral reserve there, and it's going to happen. There will be a race to these places once the reserves in other parts of the world run out. And again, I would would rather us than them sort of like that's where I'm very aligned with Trump on the kind of nationalistic US perspective. So

just throwing it out there that I understand why people think it's ridiculous. I laugh and scum when you see Trump talk about it and the way he does it in his very Trumpian fashion can be really comical and absurd and to some people like irritating and offensive and whatever else. But just to put this out there, like, I do actually think this is a real conversation we should have. And I think there's a way to do it that doesn't involve, you know, any kind of bloodshed or violence or, you know, loss of rights for the people of Greenland. So that's my kind of hot take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Another little quick pop quiz.

Do you have a guess on how many people live in Greenland if you don't know the answer to that question? Asking me specifically? Yeah. 50,000. Very good guess. It's 60,000, it's like 58,000. I think we could find a way to appease- Hold on. Great guess.

Great guess. Yeah. Fantastic guess. Incredible, really. I never would have, I would have said like 12 or 800,000 or something. Better. Thank you. They, like there's a way to appease 60,000 people in Greenland and get them on board for something. I'm just saying, that's like Heinz Field. We could figure that out. We have enough money and resources to figure that out. That's all I'm saying.

To put in a campaign that says, vote to succeed from Denmark, who currently is controlling the autonomous territory of Greenland and become an autonomous territory of the US. That's a possible thing. Yeah, I think that's true. I agree with you that this is an opening salvo from Trump who's really good at this of crazy like a fox ideas that'll come out that are insane and he'll set the bar really high. Then his goal is to end up somewhere down the ladder. Anywhere down the ladder is probably going to be a win for him. The goal here, if you just take a step back, imagine that you're a negotiator and this is your opening offer, what's the thing you probably want? The thing you probably

want is just more influence over North American maritime waters control, influence of the general sphere. You get that with the Panama Canal, you get that with Greenland, you get that with extending more influence over Canada. The thing you don't want is a protracted military invasion of Canada. That's an absurd thing. I think the thing you want is to say, hey, we're tough. We're going to be tough with you. Then you get a new conservative PM and then you could say, good cop, bad cop. Let's be nice. Let's treat. Let's talk about maybe trade routes past Baffin Island. And we're going to try to control Greenland and get a

little bit more shipping lanes that are going to be able to access some of this vital resources that we can trade more easily, not just north, but south. What if we get control of the Panama Canal back? We just wrote about Jimmy Carter, and he gave control of the canal to Panama starting in 74 with them taking over control of the canal on the promise of neutrality in 99. It is a lucrative, lucrative passage. Of course, there's reason for the US to want to be in control of it. Take aside anything about fairness or rights. There's this

great quote. Maybe you can tell me who said this, I don't recall. Who said that countries don't have friends, they have interests. And in the interests of the US, we would want to be able to control vital shipping passages through the heart of the Western Hemisphere. So, it makes sense for him to be saying these things. I don't think there's a world where we go to war with Panama. But remember, that's how we got the canal in the first place, was Teddy Roosevelt putting an embargo on Colombia to the point where Panama succeeded from Colombia so we could get a friendly government to treat with to build the canal.

So that's kind of history and that's the way nations historically express their influences, friendship and muscle. And we haven't been the country that's done that to our allies and or our neutral friends in the Western hemisphere for a long time, but things change. If we try to reset and imagine what would actually happen if the US started to posture a little bit more towards Greenland, towards Panama, I don't think the US wants to invite more scrutiny by involving its military, but I do think saying, hey, we might, and then trying to turn on a charm offensive in the foreground, that probably makes sense. So if we're worried about the military going out in January 21st to knock on Copenhagen

store and demand Greenland, I don't think that's going to happen. But I think the whisper of the threat of that, and then a little bit of people going into the Greenland population centers, which I don't know, Omanak, I can't name another city in Greenland and talking to people about maybe succeeding. That's possible. And there's a reason why it would be in our national interest. So it's a thing that we, that real politic is something worth discussing. There's obvious problems here. I don't want to pretend there's not.

I understand how absurd some of this probably sounds to some people. First of all- For sure. We're really waiting in the hypotheticals here. Yeah, France, Germany, Denmark, really critical allies, NATO allies who clearly don't want this to happen. And there's strategic risk and all sorts of risk in doing something that fractures that NATO alliance, especially in this moment.

So there's national security stuff there and just like general global alignment things that are worrisome if Trump were to do something like this. Also, there's an inherent contradiction. I mean, in just Trump's whole worldview, this whole, he's an isolationist. He doesn't want to start. Hey everybody, this is John, executive producer of YouTube and podcast content, and co-host of The Daily Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this preview of our Sunday podcast with Ari and Isaac.

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Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will K. Back, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bacopa, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to reettangle.com and check out our website.