Tangle - Some very good, extremely happy news (for once).

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

Our founder, Isaac Saul, has a very special and personal announcement to share with you all!If you'd like to reach out with any messages, please email [e-mail]. Thanks for your understanding and continued support! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to a very special Tangle podcast. This is kind of like in the spy movies, you know, where it's like if you're listening to this recording, I've died. This is a message kind of like that, except I'm alive and well, I hope. I'm recording this on January 9th, and if you are listening to this recording, it means that something very special has happened. My wife probably just gave birth to our first child. One thing I've realized from a career in covering the news is that staying so plugged in often evokes these feelings of negativity.

At Tangle, we try to combat this in small ways, like with our have a nice day section at the end of every newsletter and podcast. We also make a conscious effort to write about solutions and problem solvers, not just dysfunction and corruption. But today I'm excited to share this unambiguously good and happy news about the birth of my child. And I'm sharing this with you all, not just because I'm overjoyed and forever changed, but because it will impact some things here at Tangle in the coming weeks and months. So I recorded this message to you guys, obviously before my baby came and I have turned it over to our podcast editor, John, and asked him to publish this whenever I alerted them that the baby arrives. So this means everybody is good and healthy and the baby's here.

I just want to say a couple of things. First, since I write about our country's political and cultural landscape for a living, I want to share one quick observation from my time supporting my wife through her pregnancy. America seems very pro-child to me right now. You spend enough time online or in the commentariat and you probably think a huge swath of Americans hate kids, are anti-family, or don't appreciate the beauty and magic of pregnancy and children. The supply of articles about people not having kids, not wanting kids, and plummeting fertility

rates really seems endless. Of course these articles are based on real events and it counts, but my personal experience has been the complete opposite. Every single person I've told my wife was pregnant, stranger and family alike has genuinely lit up at the news, shared some beautiful wisdom or advice and proceeded to ask caring and thoughtful questions about her health and how we are holding up. Every parent I've spoken to has said some variation to me of, it's the best thing ever. Stressful, sure. Sleepless, maybe.

But unendingly rewarding, unquestionably fun, and eternally fulfilling. This kind of feedback came from people from across political affiliation, class, race, religion, and more. Cynics might suggest these are just polite things to say to expecting parents, or that this positivity will all change now that the baby is here, or that my perception is warped because I'm the dad, not the pregnant mom. I can't deny my experience has been vastly different from my wife's, and maybe I'm hanging on to the positivity in some uneven way.

But the response I got during this pregnancy struck me as at least a bit surprising and a nice surprise too. I've really felt nothing but love and support and that felt worth saying here on this podcast with the platform that I have. Of course, my son's birth does create some issues for me, a registered workaholic. Longtime listeners know my history with Tangle, but some of you who are new here may not. The short and sweet is that I started this whole thing as a newsletter, alone, over five years ago, on a platform called Substack. I sent my first email to 13 friends and family working on Tangle around my day job as an editor from 5am to 8am and 6pm to 9pm every day.

I've published thousands of newsletters and podcasts since, all in what is essentially the same format we have today. A neutral introduction of a topic, what the left is saying, what the right is saying, and then my take. Until 2023, I was doing most of that writing alone. Magdalena, our head of social media and ad operations, has been with me since the second year. But it wasn't until 2023 that I hired Ari, John, and Will, and we started bringing in intern cohorts and part-time editors to help. Today, our mailing list has over 300,000 subscribers.

This podcast gets hundreds of thousands of downloads a month. Our work is read all across the world, and we have sometimes as many as 10 people working on Tangle in any given week. Through the 2019 Democratic primary, the 2020 presidential race, the pandemic, sometimes as many as 10 people working on Tangle in any given week. Through the 2019 Democratic primary, the 2020 presidential race, the pandemic, the 2022 midterms, the 2024 presidential race, and everything that's happened in between, I've never really stepped away from Tangle.

We take healthy breaks for the holidays, like the 10 days off we just had around Christmas and the New Year's, but those breaks usually consist of me catching up on work I'm behind on and doing all the tasks that fell through the cracks while we were churning out newsletters and podcasts every day. It's not really time off. But now with my son here, my first child, I'm actually taking a deep breath.

I'm taking my hands off the steering wheel and I'm leaving this podcast and the newsletter in my team's hands for the next few weeks. I'm nervous about this to be honest, but I'm also confident. My team is curious. They're open-minded. They're fair. They're brilliant. They know me.

They live and breathe Tangle's mission and they understand our voice. Frankly, they've picked up much of the work that goes into producing the daily newsletter and podcasts already while I I focus mostly on just writing the My Take section, hosting this podcast, and producing our members' only Friday editions. For the next few weeks, though, I'm going to let them take control of everything, and I'm going to fade into the background and focus on my family. Editorially, the most important thing for you to know is that while I'm out, the My Take section will be written and recorded here

by a different member of the Tangle staff who will be identified in each podcast. We will include a note atop each of the My Take sections to remind you that it isn't my writing or my take in that day's take, and you'll be able to file all of your criticisms and compliments with whoever is filling in for me. So have fun with that. To be candid, I'm not entirely sure when I'll be back. I'm shooting for a month of uninterrupted paternity leave

and I'm going to try to keep my nose out of the day-to-day and just enjoy the daily tangle newsletter and podcast for the first time ever as a consumer. I should be easing my way back in late February and I presume we'll be back to normal operations sometime in March, though all of this is subject to change based on the needs of my family and my wife and my son. In advance, I came here to just say thank you for a few things. First for supporting our work, which has given me a stable job in the media industry for the last five years and made it possible for me to support my family. Second,

for understanding why I'm taking this brief break and also for trusting the people I've put in a place to carry on the Tangle mission. And third, for helping us prove that there are so many people out there in the world who are still willing to engage the other side, have their minds changed, and better understand people they disagree with. Even in times as divided and difficult as these. As always, all of this is only possible because of our members. Members are what have allowed me to build this team and also keep this running even while I'm taking paternity leave. So if you want to throw your support behind this work and you have not yet, the best way

to do so is with a membership You can find those on our website readtangle.com or by going to tanglemedia.supercast.com I appreciate you all. I hope you all enjoy a little something different these next few weeks and I will see you guys soon So have a good one peace So have a good one. Peace. you