Tangle - The cause of the East Palestine train crash.

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

We covered the story of East Palestine in a special Friday edition, which included original reporting on what happened there. Since then, residents living within 30 miles of the crash have filed a class-action lawsuit, and both former President Trump and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have visited the area. Plus, I respond to some reader feedback about Friday's edition on Fox News.You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.Today’s clickables: Quick Hits (1:48), Today’s Story (4:04), Left's Take (7:55), Right's Take (12:58), Isaac’s Take (17:55), Your Questions Answered (23:17), Under the Radar (26:31), Numbers (27:14), Have A Nice Day (28:13)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, a 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 on today's episode, we are going to be revisiting East Palestine, Ohio, this time in our typical Tangle format after covering it in a special Friday edition a couple weeks ago. If you did not read our first edition on the East Palestine train crash, I suggest you go do that. It has been unlocked for all readers. You can find it on our website at readtangle.com. Also, while you're there, you might want to check out our subscribers-only piece from Friday titled

Fox News Gets Caught. That piece generated an enormous amount of feedback, some of which I'm going to reply to today in our reader questions section. We're keeping this edition behind a paywall because we have unlocked so many of our Friday pieces recently. But I do encourage you to subscribe and go read it if you haven't yet. I'll note that, as expected, the piece did cause some people to unsubscribe, cancel their subscriptions, and write in angrily about why they were canceling their subscriptions. Though I stand wholeheartedly by our writing. So if you want to offset some of that loss of readership and support our work, now is a great time to subscribe to Tangle. All right, with that out of the way, we'll start off today with some quick hits.

First up, the U.S. Energy Department says it has concluded the most likely origin of COVID-19 was a lab leak, although it made the determination with low confidence. The FBI had come to a similar conclusion. Four other federal agencies have concluded it occurred naturally, and two say they are undecided. Number two, on Sunday, a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis in the West Bank. Separately, leaders from Israel and the Palestinian Authority met alongside international representatives to commit to de-escalating tensions. Number three, the Republican National Committee says it will require presidential candidates who want to participate in primary debates to sign a pledge

of loyalty to the party's eventual nominee. Number four, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators hit the streets across Mexico to protest the government's effort to cut salaries and funding for local election officials. Number five, at least 59 migrants traveling from Turkey drowned on Saturday while trying to land on Italy's southeastern coast. Their boat apparently crashed into rocks during the journey. It's been 23 days since a train carrying hazardous materials went off the rails in East Palestine, Ohio. 23 days of dread for the nearly 5,000 Americans now asking whether their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink. The Environmental Protection Agency is now overseeing waste removal operations in East Palestine, Ohio,

nearly a month after an overloaded train derailed and spilled tons of toxic chemicals. Today, the agency identified facilities that can accept hazardous material from the crash site. We know for a fact that this derailment occurred at car number 23. This train had three locomotives, two at the head end. train had three locomotives, two at the head end. The lead locomotive had three crew members, including one trainee. The third locomotive was between rail cars 109 and 110. There were also 149 rail cars on the train. We covered the story of East Palestine in a separate Friday edition, which included original reporting on what happened there. Since then, residents living within 30 miles of the

crash have filed a class action lawsuit, and both former President Trump and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have visited the area. A quick refresher. On February 3rd, a train operated by Norfolk Southern derailed in East Palestine, a town of roughly 4,700 people, just 50 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. 38 cars were derailed, including 11 that were carrying hazardous materials. When the first responders arrived on the scene, they noticed one of the cars was releasing vinyl chloride, a toxic chemical used to make polyvinyl chloride, a compound used in a number of plastic products like pipes and packaging material. Residents were evacuated when some of the cars caught fire. On February 5th, more residents were forced to leave after officials

made the decision to execute a controlled burn, worried that one of the cars was going to explode. On February 8th, residents were told they could safely return. Despite safety testing of waterways and air that showed safe levels of the chemicals in question, many residents reported feeling ill or seeing contaminated water and damaged wildlife. Since our reporting on February 17th, politicians on both sides of the aisle have tried to leverage the disaster for political gain. Republicans like former President Donald Trump, who visited the area, have framed East Palestine as another forgotten town in middle America

that is fighting an uncaring giant corporation and an ineffective government. Some, including East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway, criticize Biden for visiting Ukraine and not the small Ohio town. On President's Day in our country, he is over in Ukraine, Conaway says. That tells you what kind of guy he is. Columbiana County, where East Palestine resides, is a heavily

Republican area. Trump won 72% of the county's votes in 2020. Democrats, meanwhile, have pointed to rail safety regulations that were put into place during the Obama era but gutted by Trump. They've also argued that railway unions, which tried to argue for more vacation time and scheduling flexibility, understood the risks of disaster like this with understaffed trains. Since 1990, on average, there have been about 1,700 train derailments a year, or close to five a day. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who also visited East Palestine, defended his decision to wait three weeks to go there. His department also released a suite of safety proposals in response to the crash, including a whistleblower system to report safety issues, new technology advancements to implement without job cuts, and mandated notification to local authorities when trains with hazardous materials pass through their towns.

when trains with hazardous materials pass through their towns. Today, we're going to explore some arguments from the left and the right about why the derailment happened and the best path going forward. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. Many on the left argue the accident was preventable and more regulation and safety measures are needed. Some point to cost-cutting measures, record profits, and corporate greed as the cause of the accident. Others are focused on the environmental cleanup and monitoring the health and affected citizens over the long term. The Washington Post editorial board said the accident was preventable and proposed some solutions on what to do next. The National Transportation Safety Board issued a preliminary report Thursday outlining what is known about what happened. On the 23rd car of the 9,000-foot-long 149-car train, a bearing connecting a wheel to its axle was worn out

and overheated, the board said. Norfolk Southern's warning system went off. The crew tried to stop the train, but couldn't in time. In other words, Norfolk Southern's safeguards didn't fail. The problem was they were inadequate. In the past decade, America's freight rail companies have become zealots for efficiency. Trains are longer and they don't stop as often. Unprofitable customers are gone. Scheduling is meticulous. Nearly 60,000 jobs disappeared since 2015, but the company's stock price and profitability have surged. Still, derailments are at historic lows, but the East Palestine accident has shown how deficient the industry has been when it comes to investing in upgrades. Many trains still rely on a Civil War-era braking system, and they aren't using the latest detectors that experts say could have caught the deteriorating bearing months before

that fateful day, the board said. The best way to prevent this kind of debacle would be to detect the bearing problems much earlier. One option, rail safety experts say, is to require more detectors so there isn't a 20-mile gap. In the New York Times, four journalists from The Lever, David Sirota, Rebecca Burns, Julia Rock, and Matthew Cunningham Cook, wrote about how to change the industry. Improving rail safety looked promising about a decade ago in the wake of rising rates of hazmat train derailments, they wrote. President Barack Obama's transportation regulators began considering tougher rules for trains carrying hazardous materials. The proposal included

measures to require stricter speed limits, stronger rail cars, more advanced brakes, and better disclosure to inform state and local officials about the specifics of the hazardous materials passing through their communities. During the rulemaking process, the federal government's National Transportation Safety Board told Obama officials that new regulators should cover not only crude oil, but class two flammable gases such as liquefied petroleum gas and chemicals, including vinyl chloride as well. Obama officials ultimately sided with the chemical industry lobbying group, declaring that expanding the definition to include all hazardous materials is beyond the scope of the proposed rulemaking. Flash forward to February 3rd in East Palestine, Ohio, the roughly

150-car train carrying flammable carcinogens, such as vinyl chloride and benzene, wasn't classified as a high-hazard flammable train, or HHFT, even though the fire was hazardous enough to require local evacuations, they wrote. Three days later, crews had to release and burn five tank cars of the toxic gas, creating a black plume of spoke easily visible from passing passenger jets. Other dangerous chemicals had already spilled or burned in the initial crash. The train was not equipped with the electronic brakes that former Federal Railroad Administration official Stephen Dittmeier said could have at least mitigated the disaster. And even though the train was over 1.7

miles long, it had a crew of only two, plus a trainee. In Vox, Umair Ifrain focused on the need for long-term monitoring of East Palestine citizens and a continued environmental cleanup effort. Occupational health researchers have found that workers who are regularly exposed to chemicals like vinyl chloride have higher rates of liver cancer. It's a signal that can take 20 years or more to emerge. However, these workers were exposed to higher doses and in enclosed spaces, unlike the residents of East Palestine. It's not clear how exposures from the train derailment will play out, but the long latency of vinyl chloride's worst effects means that it's critical to track its concentrations in the community for years to come, Efrain wrote. Parts of East Palestine and the surrounding region will also

have to be decontaminated, cleaned up, and remediated. The water used to extinguish the train fire is now toxic, and two million gallons of it are being sent to Texas, where it will be injected underground for disposal. The contaminated soil around the train tracks is being excavated and sent to a toxic waste disposal site in Michigan. The community may also have to look for a new drinking water source. The residents of East Palestine will also have to keep tabs on their health, Irfan wrote. All these measures, however, will cost a lot of money. To that end, the EPA has ordered Norfolk Southern to pay the cleanup of the train derailment and response. If they fall short, the rail operator could face a fine of $70,000 per day, according to the EPA administrator.

All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right say that proposed regulations from the left would not have made a difference. Some criticize a cookie-cutter narrative about profits and evil corporations when this was more akin to a freak accident. Others say we should develop a paycheck protection program for residents of East Palestine. The Wall Street Journal editorial board criticized the cookie-cutter narrative of corporate greed the left is using to explain what happened. Mr. Buttigieg cites a 2015 Obama administration regulation mandating electronically controlled pneumatic braking technology on some trains carrying flammable liquids such as oil, the board said. The costly rule provided marginal safety benefits, but it would have advanced the

less anti-fossil fuel agenda. First, block pipelines. Then, make it prohibitively expensive to move oil by rail. Industry groups sued, and Congress instructed the Transportation Department to reevaluate its analysis and the Government Accountability Office to do an assessment. There's no evidence ECP brakes would have prevented the derailment, and the Obama rule wouldn't have applied to the Norfolk Southern train because it wasn't classified as a high-hazard flammable unit train. Mr. Buttigieg also criticized Norfolk Southern and other railroads for deploying technology to inspect tracks, which labor unions oppose. Automated inspections are more efficient and can detect safety problems better and more quickly than the human eye. But Biden regulators have limited the technology's use, and there's no

evidence it contributed to the derailment, the board said. Mr. Buttigieg also claimed that the accident supports the need for union-backed regulations requiring a minimum of two crew members on trains. Technology is making it safer and more efficient to operate freight trains with one worker in the cab, as many passenger trains do. Regardless, the East Palestine train had three crew members. National Review's editors said the accident had nothing to do with the Trump administration and that few of the proposed regulatory responses would have helped. Not one part of the Department regulatory responses would have helped.

Not one part of the Department of Transportation's proposed policy response to the accident would have prevented the accident, and plenty of it is completely unrelated. In other words, it is much like progressives' response to mass shootings. Call for the same policies they wanted anyway, regardless of whether they'd be effective, the editor said. Pursuing expensive regulation in the name of doing something could cause worse safety outcomes, a fact that Republicans should be prepared to explain. 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. Thank you. your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. Every regulation that wouldn't prevent this accident but nonetheless makes it more expensive to ship hazardous material by rail is a regulation that increases the incentive to ship hazardous materials by truck, which is far more dangerous. Buttigieg and others on the left have tried to pin this accident on the Trump administration. In 2017, it scrapped a proposal regulation from the Obama administration that would have required electronically controlled pneumatic ECP brakes

on high-hazard flammable trains, HHFT, they said. The Trump administration did the right thing to scrap this rule. Congress requested further study of the effectiveness of ECP breaks in 2015, and a 2017 report found their impact on safety to be inconclusive. The costs outweighed the benefits, so the regulation was abandoned, common sense. This wasn't even an example of deregulation. It was merely not adopting an additional regulation. In the Washington Post, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance said East Palestine needs its own PPP. The lack of public trust means that many of East Palestine's residents will continue to doubt that their community is safe. We cannot just order them to believe the same public health authorities who, in their view at least, bungled the response to

the COVID-19 pandemic. Even if air and water tests show little acute risk of exposure, residents want to know what could happen to those who breathe that air and drink that water for years. Indeed, chronic exposure to vinyl chloride and other chemicals present on the derailed train may be the most pressing public health issue facing East Palestine, Vance said. But East Palestine has a longer-term perception problem, too. Residents must rebuild an already stressed local economy, an immediate environment where every story about health concerns of Palestine has a longer-term perception problem, too. Residents must rebuild an already stressed local economy, an immediate environment where every story about health concerns of residents drives people and capital away from their town. A local farmer who raises chickens and hay on

her property put the matter bluntly. Do you think anyone wants animal feed from a farm in East Palestine? Do you think anyone wants eggs from me? Unfortunately, she has a point, Vance said. East Palestine needs long-term investment from both the federal government and Norfolk Southern Railway. Without special refinancing, homeowners will be underwater as flight from the community drives home prices lower, decimating the tax base on which local schools and public services rely. Farms will require direct support. Underfunded schools will need help. rely. Farms will require direct support. Underfunded schools will need help. East Palestine will need its own version of the Paycheck Protection Program to protect workers

and businesses who lost their livelihoods because of the decisions of others. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So without knowing for sure what happened in East Palestine, it's certainly easy to bend this story to your own political narrative. The Wall Street Journal editorial board did a good job addressing some of the left's claims. We have no evidence to suggest an Obama-era regulation mandating ECP breaking would have prevented this disaster. In a nod to union workers, Buttigieg criticized the technology used to inspect tracks, but it's hard to imagine how that tech would be worse than human error. The same technology has

drastically reduced train derailments over the last 30 years. Unions have also long vouched for two crew members on every train, many on the left said, but there were two crew, plus a trainee, on the train that derailed in East Palestine. There are tons of problems with major corporations buying back their own stock in lieu of investing in upkeep and safety measures, but there's no straight line between that and this accident, at least not yet. Republicans aren't faring much better. Some criticize President Biden for traveling to Ukraine instead of East Palestine, but the harsh reality is that the disaster in Ukraine is orders of magnitude larger and requires more presidential action than what is happening in Ohio.

Europe is at war, with hundreds of thousands dead and rising nuclear tensions. There are zero deaths in Ohio, which is already flooded with local, state, and federal officials, including representatives from the Biden administration. I'm not sure exactly what Biden's presence would do to help. Trump and Buttigieg only seem to have expanded the media circus. And not for nothing, but there were also plenty of train derailments with fatalities during the Trump administration that prompted zero visits from Trump or his transportation secretary. Nobody seemed to think that was wrong then. Trump or his transportation secretary. Nobody seemed to think that was wrong then. Trump's insistence that the government and Norfolk Southern are doing nothing

for residents isn't just untrue, but unhelpful, much like his decision to hand out branded bottle water and Trump hats as Ohio officials are trying to calm fears about the drinkability of the area's tap water. Here, in my opinion, is a more realistic look at what's happening. The National Transportation Safety Board has pointed to the failure of a wheel bearing as the cause of the derailment, not the brakes or the train's speed or a mistake by the crew. As we covered in our initial story, those wheel bearings are typically monitored by hotbox detectors, devices situated on the rails that take the temperature of wheel sets as they go by. One weakness in this process is that they're often fairly far apart, sometimes 20 miles or more. Consider this from the Washington Post report on the bearing issue. The 23rd car was 38 degrees

above ambient temperature initially. 10 miles later, it was 103 degrees above. The next detector, which came 20 miles later, recorded the suspect bearing's temperature at 253 degrees above ambient. That's when the alarm went off. So, specific to this crash, one obvious solution is more hotbox detectors within short distances between them, so gaps in the data like this aren't as common. Some experts have also suggested that rather than temperature, detectors should be monitoring vibration levels, which could catch a failing bearing much earlier. I'd take either reform. That doesn't mean other safety solutions should be ignored. Train derailments have fallen precipitously in the last few decades, but since 1990, we're still averaging about 1,700 per year. There were about

1,049 recorded last year. It's common enough, in the midst of this story, another Norfolk Southern train derailed on Saturday morning in North Carolina. Given the unbelievable profit surge for the industry as a whole and the number of train derailments we're still seeing, I think there are some no-brainer regulations to be implemented. One, proposed by Buttigieg, is for the freight rail to adopt the Federal Railroad Administration's confidential close call reporting program, which creates a whistleblower program to report safety issues. Amtrak and other commuter railroads already use this, but Class 1 freight doesn't. There's no reasonable objection I've seen to implementing this, and even some conservatives support for it. I also think costlier regulations like the ECP braking system are reasonable to push for.

Obviously, you don't want these regulations to be so expensive that running hazardous materials by truck becomes more cost-effective, a point National Review's editors made that I hadn't thought of. It's also true that framing them as a solution to the East Palestine crash is incorrect, but framing them as a generally common-sense idea in the context of the industry is actually pretty compelling. If the railroad industry wants smaller crews, better profit margins, tighter schedules, and higher bars for classifying hazardous materials on trains, all expected cost-cutting moves in an already profitable industry, it can't also resist improving the technological safety of the rail itself. There has to be a give and take. It's

one thing to resist stiff, complicated regulations that might kneecap your industry in tough times. It's quite another thing to be raking in historic profits, cutting your workforce by 30%, and resisting new braking systems that even Norfolk Southern concedes could reduce stopping distances by as much as 60%. In the meantime, the residents of East Palestine need continued health monitoring, attention, and financial restitution for what they've had to live through. Hopefully, the local, state, and federal governments can focus both on preventing future incidents like this and keeping a watchful eye on the community suffering at the same time. Alright, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered.

This one's from Daniel in Wisconsin. Daniel said, you wrote an entire article criticizing Fox News and then said we should go elsewhere for our news. Please don't tell me you mean CNN and MSNBC. I thought you were supposed to be unbiased, but this is definitely making me question my subscription. All right, Daniel, so look, this piece that I wrote on Friday has generated a lot of feedback that looks a lot like this, including some readers who actually wrote in to say that they had canceled their subscriptions. The quick summary for those who haven't read it is that a recent court filing shows many of Fox's biggest stars knew the claims of election fraud were bogus, but gave them airtime anyway, while also pushing for other reporters of the network to be disciplined or fired for truthfully covering the claims. The piece is meant to explain what happened and why Fox News viewers should care.

But I am not suggesting that you go watch MSNBC or CNN instead. In fact, I mentioned both of those news organizations in the piece to say this, with the premier legacy cable news outlets like CNN and MSNBC having obvious left-leaning slants. Nor has my media criticism ever been confined to Fox News or any single news outlet. I just wrote an entire 6,000-plus word piece about the way many and generally left-leaning media outlets failed during the Trump-Russia story. We've now covered Hunter Biden's laptop, the censorship of that story, and the Twitter files close to 10 times. I wrote a lengthy deep dive on how media bias works with a major focus on left-leaning organizations. Last year, I wrote an entire piece titled Journalistic Malpractice at the New York Times. If anything, I think my media criticism has been

lopsided in over-covering left-leaning biases that exist in the media space. This was the first time I've ever written exclusively about Fox News. To pretend we are somehow biased for covering this story the way we did, or that I suggested Fox is the only problem in the media, ignores our massive existing body of work on the issue of media bias. When I say look elsewhere, I certainly do not mean MSNBC or CNN. Like Fox News, those networks provide something people want in the market, and they have their own strengths. I enjoy CNN's international coverage, and MSNBC's election coverage with Steve Kornacki is quite good. But they all have glaring weaknesses, which leads to my opinion that you should watch as little cable news as possible. Instead, if you're honestly concerned

about how to respond to Fox as a viewer following the news we covered last week, I would recommend trying to read as many diverse and opposing sources as you can about it or any single issue. That's what I do every day, and it's how I came up with the concept for Tangle, putting all of that in one place. But anytime you combine news and entertainment the way cable news does right now, you are bound to get into trouble, lean into hyperbole, and focus too much on inflaming partisan tensions and driving up ratings over factual reporting. It's clear that's where Fox and most of the other major networks go off the rails, and it's why I frequently tell my readers to look elsewhere for reliable news.

All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under-the-radar section. Democrats' divides over the U.S.-Mexico border are becoming more intense, with nearly 80 Democratic lawmakers openly protesting President Biden's recent actions. Last week, Biden introduced new rules that will make it harder for migrants to apply for asylum. Many Democrats are expressing outrage about the changes, comparing Biden to Trump and describing the rules as racist. Well, the new rules require asylum seekers to jump through more hoops in order to pass through Mexico and the United States. Biden has simultaneously introduced new ways for migrants to enter the U.S. legally.

The Washington Post has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of train derailments in 2015 was 1,350. The number of train derailments in 2022 was 1,049. The number of railway hazmat incidents, including toxic chemicals in 2013, was 667. The number of railway hazmat incidents including toxic chemicals in 2022 was just 355. The number of truck hazmat incidents in 2013 was 13,880. The number of truck hazmat incidents in 2023 was 23,178. The cost of the damages done

by those 23,000 highway hazmat spills in 2022 was $21 million. The cost of the damages done by those 355 railway hazmat spills in 2022 was $45 million. That discrepancy is likely due to how much more material trains can carry. All right, that is it for our numbers section, which brings us last but not least to our have a nice day story. The American chestnut tree

used to make up roughly 25% of all of America's hardwood trees. But in the early 20th century, the accidental introduction of the chestnut blight, a fungus from Asia, resulted in the death of virtually all American chestnut trees. That's an estimated $3.5 billion in all. Now, though, the American Chestnut Foundation, dedicated to bringing the trees back, believes it has created a genetically engineered tree that can still contract the blight but does not suffer from it. After years of testing the trees to make sure they would not harm natural ecosystems, regulators believe they are ready for introduction into the wild, which could happen as soon as this summer. The Berkshire Eagle has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description.

All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com. And like I said at the top of the episode, we've got some really excellent Friday news editions there, the Fox News piece from Friday, and last week's East Palestine piece. I encourage you to subscribe and go read those.

Either way, we'll be right back here tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited 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 Bokova, 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. who created our podcast logo. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. For more from Tangle, check out our website at www.tangle.com. Can trees help us grow more resilient to climate change? At the University of British Columbia, we believe that they can. Dr. Suzanne Simard and her team are connecting our future to nature. Their Mother Tree project could transform how we manage forests, capturing more carbon and safeguarding biodiversity for generations to come. At UBC, our researchers are answering today's most pressing questions. To learn how we're moving the world forward, visit ubc.ca forward happens here.

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 6 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.