Tangle - The Sunday podcast: Isaac and Ari talk Bolivia, big layoffs and bold grievances.

Episode Date: January 28, 2024

On this week’s podcast, Isaac Saul (Founder) and Ari Weitzman (Managing Editor) talk about Isaac’s recent adventure in Bolivia and how he can’t park a motorcycle, some breaking news regarding a former Fox News host coming to the Tangle podcast and the New Hampshire Primary and how Nikki Haley could win, but probably won’t. They also discuss the recent layoffs at legacy media companies and last, but not least, the Airing of Grievances (the one where Ari looks like the a**hole.)You can read today's podcast ⁠⁠here.You can also check out our latest YouTube video about misinformation and fake news that has spread like wildfire in the three months since Hamas’s attack on Israel and the subsequent fighting in Gaza here.Today’s clickables: (1:01) Discussing Bolivia, and how to take notes when traveling. (22:47) BREAKING: Bill O'Reilly is coming on the Tangle pod? (And a criticism from a reader about talking to O'Reilly) (33:38) The New Hampshire primary, how Nikki could win but why she probably won't. (53:30) The media bloodbath this week. (69:35) Airing of Grievances, and Ari looks like the assholeYou can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Are you a student interested in journalism, politics, and media? Know someone who is? We’ve opened applications for Tangle’s college ambassador program and are looking for engaged, enthusiastic college students to represent Tangle on their campuses. Applications will be open from January 23-February 4, and the program will run through the spring semester. If you or someone you know is interested, we are accepting applications here.Email Will Kaback at [e-mail] with any questions!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.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take every now and then. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. I'm your co-host, Ari Weitzman. And today is Friday, January 26th. We're going to talk a bit today about the New Hampshire primary, the bloodbath happening in the media. It seems to be on a lot of people's minds. And I think it's important for us to touch on. As always, we've both got some grievances to wrap up the

show, which I'm so glad has become our thing. But we just got this Friday edition out on my little adventure through Bolivia, I'm like in a bad mood already because immediately after it went out, I caught a typo in it that pissed me off, which is something that happens pretty regularly. Not regularly. It happens regularly. It happens enough that we call it regularly. And you know, it's something that, um, it's hard to say who it bothers more, you or me, but it definitely bothers both of us a lot. And I think the tolerance for it's just reaching a point where it's time to change, change stuff. But yeah, the point was Bolivia, not the typo. This, this particular typo, I just want to say really frustrated me because we have this

process where we edit the newsletter in a Google Doc, and then I copy and paste the edition, the edited version of the newsletter from the Google Doc over into the back end of Ghost, which is our publishing platform, and then I send it. And there was an edit in the newsletter where we were changing further and further to farther and farther, but it was an unresolved edit. I somehow miss it when I was porting stuff over. So the way the copy and paste works is instead of just copying and pasting

what's left after the cut the editor made, it copies and pastes everything that exists so what got published in the newsletter was f-a-u-r-t-h-e-r farther and farther for further and further which i know there's going to be somebody who reads that and writes in and is like that's not how you spell further and And it's just like, I know that email is coming. And so I'm already preemptively mad about it. And I'm preemptively mad about it too. But pushing past that a bit, I did have some writery questions for you about the Bolivia piece. We are going to be kind of swapping roles here, and I'm going to be interviewing you on your own show about something you wrote,

which will be fun for you, I think. But as regards the writing, I got to tell you, I was pretty impressed by the ability to put out something that was pretty well polished in the amount of time that you did. This was about 8,000 words, which is double what our normal newsletter length is. Yeah, you've said it's a narrative style, so it's a little less dense, easier to flow into as a writer and reader. But I'm curious how you wrote it. Did you write notes during your trip or did you brain dump when you got back? That's a good question. I always write notes. I have to. What I typically do is basically every trip or experience I have, I just have a note on my phone dedicated to that. And throughout the trip, I'm just jotting little details down that seem

interesting to me or things that I feel like will prompt a memory. So I had that whole note and then I go in and I write without referencing the note. I write as much as I can remember, just like overwrite it, spill out everything I can try and like, you know, hit some sort of narrative arc on the first pass. And then I go back to the note once I've written a bunch of stuff and get all these extra details that I had taken down during the trip and then find the places, sort of plug them in. And inevitably, being able to reference the note kind of jogs my memory about other things that happened. But it is interesting. I'll say, even for this 8,000-word piece, I was there for six days. When I got done the piece,'ll say like, even for this 8,000 word piece, I was there for six days. There was,

I let, when I got done the piece, I was like, God, there were like three or four other stories I really wanted to tell that weren't, you know, there's just like little stuff that pops up that you remember that didn't make it in. So the notes are definitely a helpful way for me to do that i have a notoriously bad memory without them i could not write a piece like that the only other thing that helps is like in the moment if something happens or if you know i learned a lot about bolivia my guide is telling us stuff on the trip when i really want to remember something, I would say it back to him or ask him a question about it. I remember one of the first things he told me was this thing about how in Santa Cruz, the whole city is all these rings and the streets run perpendicular

through the rings, which is a really interesting way to structure the city. And so I said, are some rings denser than others population-wise? Are some rings more interesting than others? Do certain people live on certain rings? And so he sort of answered those questions. And then I kind of remember that when I was writing. But yeah, it's mostly from a long-ass note that exists in my phone. Okay. And it's like a waffle iron grid is what it sounds like in Santa Cruz. It's what you're describing. Yeah. Yeah. That is actually a really good way to put it. Like a waffle iron. I didn't think of

that. I wish I had, see, I could have used that. Why didn't you put that in there? I could have used that in there. No, it's not my job. Very much is my job. Yeah. It's definitely your job. It's because I did my job badly. Yeah. okay. But let's go back to the beginning with this, though. You called Will, our research coordinator slash other roles, jack-of-all-trades guy, and me together for a call a couple weeks ago and said, Hey, I have an idea. It's kind of crazy.

And then you presented this Bolivia trip to us. Can you walk the listeners through how you got into this? Where did this come from? Yeah, it was a long time in the making, I would say. My cousins have been talking about this trip for like three or four months and trying to recruit various members of the family to come onto the trip. Obviously, it's a little limited by the fact that not everybody in my family knows how to ride a motorcycle. And I'm one of the people that does. But they had been working me over for a little while and repeatedly, you got to come, salt flats, Che Guevara, mountains,

it's going to be so fun. It's going to be wild. And it wasn't like I needed my arm to get twisted, but I had a ton of travel on my schedule already. I have this huge trip I'm doing in the spring to Bolivia or to Bali for two weeks. And so I was just hesitant about the idea of leaving. And then I was down there visiting them and I was supposed to go from their place on the border in West Texas to Mexico for our good friend Robbie Shapiro's wedding. And that was another complicating factor. So they're trying to talk me into it with the wedding in the middle of this trip that I'm doing this visit I'm having with them. And I just kept thinking like,

this is not possible or whatever. And they're finally like, why don't you just email the guy, tell him what you can and can't do, see if he can tell you like he can modify the trip, whatever. And so then I eventually wrote to this guy, Chris, who runs the tour and said, I really want to do this. I don't think I can do it. Here's like the dates I could potentially come. Can I just like get off the trip on day six or whatever? He was like, actually, that works perfectly.

Like we'll be in La Paz and we'll be able to, you know, get you to the airport in the morning and just fly you right back home to Philly. And I was like, oh, all right. So maybe the timing does work. And I was like, well, you know, I don't have any gear or boots or he's like, I have gear, I've got a helmet, you know, just come down. It was like every question I had, he had a good answer for. Which was kind of a sign for you then. Yeah, definitely a sign for me. And then the last thing was like, oh, I run this daily politics

newsletter and podcast where I have to cover the news based on what happened in the last 24 hours. And that's going to be really hard to do from a motorcycle trip in Bolivia. So honestly, I was most nervous about kind of broaching the topic with the team and being like, hey, I know we just had a two week break for Christmas, but I would like to now go on a motorcycle trip to Bolivia. Uh, and I think everybody was a little bit hesitant in the beginning. You certainly expressed some reservations. Like, I'm not sure this is the perfect environment for which this would work, or this is not how I would draw up you being gone for a week is like, we have a week of notice and whatever. But I will say the team, everybody got on board pretty quick and was kind of ballers about it. I mean, jumped in and filled a bunch of roles and we pulled it off pretty much without a hitch in my opinion. Yeah, I think we did pretty

decently. I am naturally a bit contrarian. So anytime you come to me with an idea, my first thought is, nah, and then I'll push back, which I think is a good process. It takes advantage a little bit of our tendencies as it is. But yeah, my hesitancy was that we have been thinking about trying to do a decoupling of Isaac's take from Tangle's take for a while. And our hesitancy is just knowing that there's this connection you have and trust you have with the readership and listenership. And we don't want to rush into that coupling. We want to make sure we respect it and we go through a good process. So we'd been talking about that was on our radar. And then it was, hey, what if we just do it? What if I just go to Bolivia and do it? And I was like, no, I want a vacation. You don't get a vacation. No. And then, you know, thought a little bit past my own selfishness for a second, realized it was a good opportunity for us.

also, I think, want us to do that. They want Tangle to be Tangle and you to be a part of it and are starting to trust the brand more. And it's going to free us up to do other stuff. It's a good thing. Yeah. I don't know why, in retrospect, it was kind of silly to be worried about how people are going to react to like, hey, I'm going to be gone. I mean, literally, there was not a single email that was negative, which, you know, email is different notoriously than the comment section. People are a lot more human and kind of interpersonal and thoughtful, I think. But I got so many emails that were just like, dude, obviously this is the right choice. And I got a dozen emails from people saying, you should not get off this trip early.

You should go do the whole thing. Like why stay longer? Yeah. Forget about work, stay longer. So that was cool. Cause I didn't read a lot of those emails until I was down there. Um, cause it was just such a crazy, I got sick, missed my flight, did all this stuff. And then the, all my plans went sideways. And by the time I actually got down there, it'd been a total whirlwind. And I opened my email and it was like email after email after email from people just being like, obviously this was the right call. Can't wait to read about it or whatever. So many thanks to all the Tangle listeners and readers out there who threw their support

behind it. And good positive reinforcement for me. Good positive reinforcement for me. I mean, I think there's a reality about the work of writing and being a journalist and commenting on the world where it's like, if you just sit inside an office and read a bunch of stuff all the time, you can't actually ever learn anything or have any good insights. And this is like a good, I think that's a good North star for me to keep having and for anyone to really keep having, which is just like, you know, if you want to think deeply or critically about the world, you actually have to go out there and experience it. You can't just read about it. Definitely. And took that jump. This is not going to be the last time, even in this podcast, that we appreciate the listenership and readers. So we're going to keep doing that to about Iowa. But you went, you did a lot of work before you left to set us up more easily, which was useful and really helpful. And then let's put all that away. Let's put that in the trunk tangles in the trunk. And now you're on

the motorcycle. You get to Bolivia, you get over your illness. You're there. You're on the bike. What, what are you guys doing? Like what's, what's the first step? What's going through your mind as you're getting started? I felt in over my head pretty much immediately. Um, I said this to my wife, Phoebe, when I got back, but if I had known how difficult it was going to be, I probably wouldn't have gone, which in a lot of ways, I mean, it's awesome to feel that way at least, because it was a reach for me. It was at the very top of my riding ability. I mean, I almost ate it a few times for sure. But in order to be upright on the bike, I had to go slower and more cautiously than anybody else who was on the trip.

And I have a good bit of off-road experience riding a dirt bike. I mean, I meant to include this picture and I forgot to in today's newsletter, but I have an awesome picture of me when I'm 13 years old, kickstarting a 150cc dirt bike in the desert in Texas. It's one of my favorite pictures ever. And it's such an awesome, fond memory of my childhood. And I grew up riding like that, but I'd never been on a bike this big. I'd never been in traffic on a motorcycle before. Wow. And the traffic there was insane. It was total madness you know, total madness. People were, you know, single lane highways where people are riding in both lanes, going in one direction at the same time, passing Mack trucks,

you know, there's big cars, there's small cars, there's motorcycles, there's cyclists. It's like a really popular place for cyclists, tourists, cyclists to come. Even on the highways? Sometimes on the highways, a lot on the back roads, the mountain bikers and stuff. Trailers, they had everything. And then just these insane dogs that run out in the middle of the street, literally just sprint out directly in front of you and you have to slam on your brakes or swerve or whatever. Some try and bite you. There's these stands on the side of the road and then there's the cops and the military stops and the barrios, the blockades. So it was nuts. I pretty much fell

out of my... Definitely a little out over my skis immediately. But by the end of the first day, I was like, oh, I'm getting better. Like I just did six hours and I'm way better now than I was this morning. And I felt a lot stronger. And I wrote about this in the newsletter today, but on the second day, my cousin Marco had a pretty bad crash on pavement, which in some ways we talked about this at the end of the trip was kind of a blessing. Like he came out relatively unscathed. He had a pretty gnarly like leg injury, but you know, what's a leg. And he, uh, you know, he was huge bruise. It looked like, yeah, he was fine, all things considered. What's a leg? And he said, which I think was really true,

I'm glad that that happened because I would have killed myself on a different part of this trip if I hadn't had any screw-ups because I would have been so cocky and confident in what we were doing. And it had the total same effect on me. I was just getting really comfortable. And then I saw this crash happen behind me and it was a total reality check. And our guide,

Chris, said to us in the beginning on the very first day, one of the questions we asked was, where do most people crash? And we were thinking on the journey, where do most people crash? where do most people crash? And we were thinking like on the journey, where do most people crash? And he was like, most people crash right after they get really comfortable. And it was a good piece of advice that I immediately forgot and ignored

until Marco crashed. And I was like, oh, you know what? I'm glad that that happened because I honestly may have done something a lot dumber than any of the things I did if I had gotten my confidence really up throughout the trip. Something my dad always says, which is one of my favorite Rich Weitzman sayings is, being smart is learning from your mistakes. Being wise is learning from other people's. So it's nice to be able to exercise a little bit of wisdom. But you also had this great detail you added,

which was that you were the king of dropping the bike when you were just standing there, which is great. It's a super embarrassing way to go down, I have to say. Maybe the most embarrassing. Marco at least fell on this badass switchback turn where we were doing 40 miles per hour flying through Bolivian traffic in the mountains. I mean, it was like a pretty radical thing to do to like eat it where he did and come out totally unscathed. Mine were all three of the times I dropped my bike

were parking. The first one was stopping on a incline, you knowline, a decline, I guess is what you would call that. Yeah, one light. Yeah. And looking over my shoulder and just tipping the bike over. And then the worst was we got to Kime. We had just had this incredible, beautiful ride through the Andes that I wrote about in the newsletter, which was like landing in an airplane and coming through the clouds. We were above the clouds in the mountains and then descended down. And we came to this little mountain town called Kimei and we pulled in into the driveway of our hotel. And I was going like two miles per hour. And I just came up really, really slowly on this little incline into the

driveway and the bike just stalled out. We're at altitude, so the engines are acting really funny. Typically on a dirt bike or a motorcycle, it's like a car. If you leave it in first gear and you're on relatively flat ground or going upwards and you just aren't touching anything, the car will just roll. But in the altitude, it's struggling so much for oxygen that you have to gas it in a lot of places. And so I just had no gas and I was just rolling up in first and the bike stalled out and I came to a complete stop. And then I felt it starting to tip and I was like, God damn it, not again. And I just tried to get my feet down. I'm holding, and I just bailed and dropped the bike.

I'm holding like, and I just bailed and dropped the bike. And I look up and it's like 50 Bolivian faces all just looking at me. We're like in the middle of this tiny little town. We just made so much noise. We're like the big white people rolling through and our giant loud motorcycle. So everybody's already staring at us. So there's like crowd of people runs over and a couple of guys helped me pick up the bike and they're and we're all speaking Spanish to each other. And I'm like, and it was just like so embarrassing. Like the most ungraceful entrance you could possibly imagine. Sounds kind of like if you're a sports fan and you're going to an away game and you're walking in a crowd of the home fans and you're like, check this out.

And you go to Shotgun and Beer and you just spill it down your shirt. Yeah. Everyone's looking at you. Yeah. Maybe even worse than that, honestly. That one was by far the most embarrassing. But I was very glad that I didn't have any falls.

Had a couple of really close calls on the off-road stuff where I just sort of caught the bike, got my feet down, recovered, which is a really fun, exciting feeling when you don't actually fall. It's kind of a nice thing to happen. And had no close calls really on the pavement because I was just being so careful. But yeah, dropped it several times when we were parking. And honestly, it would have been more than three, except that after the third one, our guide, Chris, like made me, made people help me anytime we were like, like we'd be pulling into a parking spot and he would get off his bike and like, you know, he'd kind of come over and

talk to me, but it was very obvious he was like standing there ready for me to drop the bike again. And we like, you know, a couple of times we had to move the bikes when they weren't started and he like, everybody's doing it by themselves. And he would come over and like, help me push my bike. And I was just like, God damn it. It's a little embarrassing, but I also think it's kind of perfect for you as a result, because you get to say, I did the whole trip. You had a lot of people on your trip have to ride in the support truck. You get to say, I didn't fall or wipe out. I didn't injure myself. And you get to also say, but I also fell. So I'm not better than anybody, but your falls, you know, even if they're a little weirder, it's still something you can say with humility and be honest about. It also reminds me a bit of skiing,

honestly. Like I've only skied a couple dozen times, but this idea of you're safer because you are being way more cautious is true for me when I've been skiing. And the hardest parts were always when I was getting started getting on and off the lifts. When you're at almost no speed and you have to balance yourself, it feels a little shaky. Yeah, that makes total sense to me. I want to move on this Bolivia stuff. I was about to try and transition anyway, because we have a ton to talk about in today's podcast, but I just got some tangle breaking news right here, which is a nice, it'll be a nice, hard transition. Will just texted me. Will, as we said, Jack of all trades research editor, Our, as we said, jack-of-all-trades research editor also runs our booking for all the podcasts. Instead, he just booked Bill O'Reilly for the Tangle podcast for next week. Really? So, very interesting piece of news. Yeah, this is a really weird, totally bizarre thing that has happened.

Totally bizarre thing that has happened. Bill O'Reilly, the former Fox News host who was ousted because of sexual harassment allegations at Fox News, most of which, as far as I know, were all settled quietly in court. He somehow discovered Tangle, reached out to me. He's had me on the show a few times. Now he's reading Tangle. And look, my politics are all over the place. Bill O'Reilly is like a hardcore conservative, obviously. He's like, he's Tucker Carlson before Tucker Carlson was Tucker Carlson. He's like the OG Fox News guy. And he loves Tangle. He like talks about us on the show. He's like, which I'm so, I'm not totally sure how to feel about it. I'm flattered in a lot of ways. I think it's like proof of our concept that I know I have a lot of friends who are way more liberal and they read and love Tangle. And

then we have a lot of readers who are very conservative, but to be fair, a good chunk of our conservative readership are kind of like, I wouldn't say never Trump Republicans, but they're closer to the center than most your standard Trump voters are. And then there's like this, like we have Bill O'Reilly, who's just like, you know, diehard Trumper in most ways and is like, you know, a hard right dude who gets value out of what we're doing and loves it. So we had this idea of like, I've been on his show a few times just as like a, you know, as some pundit who's coming on, I'm just talking randomly about whatever's going on in politics. And we were like, let's invite him on our podcast and talk to him.

Because, you know, I really, what I really want to do is chat with him about Fox News, his experience there, current state of the network, how they covered the election, Tucker. I want to talk to him about media stuff. His political opinions are so not mysterious that I don't think there's a ton of interesting stuff there. I mean, I'm sure it'll come up and he comments on the news every day and has been for a while, but so this is a very interesting get for us. I'm super excited to talk to him. I hope we get to interview him together. I think he's coming, expecting to talk to me and you and I want to start doing some interviews together. So I'm going to certainly ask them if we can bring you on as well, but bizarre, fascinating,

develop like, it's just like so weird that this is happening, that we have like this relationship with Bill O'Reilly all of a sudden. It's going to get less and less weird, so you better get used to it, kid. I mean, now that we're getting up there, it's nice to be able to actually talk to the people that we cite in the newsletter. And Bill O'Reilly, we have, sight in the newsletter and bill o'reilly we have we i think we mentioned him correct me if i'm wrong i may be but when we ran that friday piece that was a criticism on fox news i think we mentioned him because he has been a very conservative critic of fox news since he's left and i think that's one of the more interesting things i'd want to talk to him about yeah no that and like he's also an armchair historian and he's got a lot of thoughts about American history,

which is cool. Definitely. I got an email. I'm going to put you on the spot here. I got an email from a reader. I'll be curious what you think. Who basically said, we mentioned in the newsletter that I had gone on a show

and they were very upset. They basically said, this is like the equivalent of you sitting down with Harvey Weinstein or something, which on the merits of it, I disagree with. I mean, Harvey Weinstein is a convicted rapist. Bill O'Reilly was accused of sexual harassment. There are degrees of things here, and I think there are different degrees. But it certainly is a valuable thing to keep in mind of association. He was kind of just like, I don't think you want you and your brand associated with this person. Why have you gone on his show two or three times now? And I sort of fought him on like, he listed a bunch of people who, again, were convicted of rape and compared it to me doing that, which I thought was a little bit hyperbolic, but his point was well taken.

I don't know, it made me think, and now we're talking about bringing him on the show, which I totally think we should do because I'm open to talking to most people and I want to hear his perspectives on a lot of things that I think could be an interesting interview. But what do you think about that association question of people you can and can't talk to? Well, we should be willing to talk to anybody. I get the idea of saying you don't want to associate or profit from the wrong people.

of saying you don't want to associate or profit from the wrong people. But first, I'd wonder if Bill would be willing to hear questions about it. Maybe not. Maybe that's part of the settlement. But secondly, I do think that, like you said, there's degrees of terribleness. It does sort of fit with this concept that we have of, honestly, criminal justice reform, where you don't want to just flatten a person into being the worst thing they've ever done. justice reform for those reasons are also the most critical of people that have committed very specific kinds of crimes or settled for accusations of having allegedly committed those crimes. And I think that's a little bit of a contradiction. We keep every year, I think will be a tradition for us at the end of the year, citing this Scott Alexander, the blogger who wrote this wonderful piece years ago called, I Can Tolerate Anything But The Outgroup, about the meaning of true tolerance. And it's not to condone. It's not that I'm associating with anybody. And when I do so,

I condone all of their history. But to say that I'm tolerant of this person, I think they bring value in other ways. And certainly Bill O'Reilly brings value in his history, his credentials of conservatism, his opinions draw a large following. And that is the idea. That's the news. And we should be able to be okay to take the good with the bad and talk to people. Otherwise, we really limit ourselves. And I think that's antithetical to what we try to do is to try to

broaden our horizons and talk to more people, even if we don't think they're perfect. So I'm somewhat defensive of it, but I also understand the criticisms and I think I'd circle back to point one. Yeah, that's a well-articulated answer. I think I pretty much agree with all of it. I don't, my suspicion, it's always a tricky thing as a journalist or interviewer, media person. Do you write to Bill O'Reilly's PR person and say, hey, was he willing to talk about this before? Or do you just put him on the spot and ask him the question on the show and he just declines the answer? My suspicion is in either if we put him on the spot on the show or if we preempted it with the question, the answer would be we can't talk about it because everything I've read about

it is that he settled these cases with some kind of NDA or something. Yeah, that makes sense. That's what you'd expect too. Yeah, and I think it's, I mean, whatever. It's a fair response and it's probably the legally right thing for him to do and reputationally smart thing for him to do. So I don't know exactly how he would handle it or what he would say, but yeah, I think on net,

I think we want to be a big tent media organization. And this is a great symbolic kind of representation of how we're winning at that. I mean, Bill O'Reilly is not recommending the New York Times and Ezra Klein is not recommending Fox News to their viewers. And well, I don't know if Ezra's ever recommended Tangle, but I know he was, at least for some period of time, a pretty active Tangle reader. And Bill O'Reilly recommending Tangle to his audience, having that kind of wide range of people, I think is really special and indicative of what we're doing.

And I'm super proud of it. I was going to just add that I think it is part of our ethos, but I also think you're opposing to Bill O'Reilly, Ezra Klein. And relative to some news that came out, the person that's always been on the other side of Bill O'Reilly to me has been Jon Stewart. And now he's coming back to The Daily Show. So I think it would be really great if we could manage to get those two in a room together again. That'd be amazing. I mean,

I grew up when I was in college watching those two go on each other's shows and just argue and disagree and then smile and shake hands. And how many people tell us that that's exactly what they want to see now? And you can't get it if you only put the person you like up. I'm very curious to see Jon Stewart come back to The Daily Show. I'm very, very scared it's going to be like the latest installment of Indiana Jones where it's just like

watching this guy who's totally out of his prime get dragged back in front of the cameras again. I don't know. I caught some of Jon Stewart's Apple show, which I actually thought there were some good moments. He's still, he is a fantastic interviewer. One of the best. I learn from him every time I watch him do interviews. And he's really good at talking to people in that setting. But the kind of like sticky daily show thing didn't quite feel like it was landing anymore.

So I'm going to watch. I'm going to tune in because I'm curious what he has to say and how they structure the show. But I'm very worried that it's going to be like another terrible, you know, movie that they just made like three too many of or whatever. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Speaking of Bill O'Reilly, this is actually a great transition into one of the things we want to make sure we talk about, which is the New Hampshire primary. When I was on Bill O'Reilly's show last week, this week, I guess this was like Tuesday, the thing that we talked about the most on the show, the entire segment was about what Nikki Haley was going to do after the New Hampshire primary. And the New Hampshire primary had not happened yet. And Bill and I disagreed. I said that I thought she was going to stick it out

through South Carolina, maybe drop out right before South Carolina, but I had a pretty strong feeling she was going to at least get back to her home state. And Bill made the case that she was going to get smoked in New Hampshire, and then she was going to drop out basically the next day. It's Friday. And I would say things are looking much better for me than they're looking for Bill. Nikki Haley has released a statement saying that she's just getting started. She's going to see this thing through. She's running tons of ads in South Carolina. She's spending a lot of money. She's talking a lot about the South Carolina primary. She seems to be kind of trying to change her tactics a little bit. So if we bring Bill on

the show, I'm definitely going to bring up the fact that I think I was right about this and he was wrong, that she's sticking it out. But it is an interesting, I mean, this is the news of the week, was the New Hampshire primary. Nikki Haley shows up relatively competitively. Relative to expectations, at least. Yeah. She beat some polling numbers. She won over some independents. She basically got smoked everywhere else. I'm curious, I guess, two things. Do you think, A, should she drop out? Is this a waste of time for her to stick around through South Carolina where she's probably going to get obliterated? It's a very conservative state.

And B, do you expect her to actually follow through on South Carolina? Are you in my camp or Bill's camp on this? Well, so I guess you're asking the question, what makes sense for Haley, So I guess you're asking the question, what makes sense for Haley, not what makes sense for the Republican voters. So we'll frame it that way. And I think this is going to pair with a reader question that we got that we're going to be answering, I think, this week about the politics or the business of politics, the money side of it, which is where those incentives are for Haley. She's got big donors, big endorsements. She's going to keep fundraising and getting endorsements. She's winning over independents. And we're hearing reports from people in Iowa and New Hampshire saying that they know some of the people that they see at these primaries are Democrats, and they're going there to vote for Haley, which is a story in of itself about how Haley would be a good candidate to run against Biden in the general election. And that's the story she's telling. Whether or not it's the story people are hearing, it's a different matter, but she is getting money for telling that story.

Again, don't know if it's going to be votes, but it's profitable for her right now. And she also has a decent argument. So if you have a good financial incentive and you have a good argument to make, even if your polling numbers are low, keep making the argument and see if you can change it a little bit. She doesn't have a lot of time. I don't think that she's going to change anybody's mind to a degree that matters. But the big question is, because this is a Bail's counter argument, is it going to be enough to make it seem that when she loses, she's not getting absolutely dragged by Trump in her home state? Because if she does, that's an embarrassment.

She gets labeled a loser, and it's going to be hard for her to pony up next time. That's the big calculation she's making. It seems like she's taking the risk. I think it's worth it, honestly. big calculation she's making. It seems like she's taking the risk. I think it's worth it, honestly. I think people aren't going to be remembering her as the person Trump annihilated, but as the last person left. Yeah. We cited Henry Olsen in the newsletter this week, and we also interviewed him in the podcast version of the newsletter. So for those of you who listened to that episode, you heard him come on and talk a little bit.

He made what I thought was maybe the best argument for Haley sticking in was just like, it's early. She's proven that she has some strength. Her numbers are trending in the right direction. And a month is an incredibly long time. A week is an eternity, so I don't know what a month is. I mean, it is... A lot could happen between now and then, which kind of got me thinking a little bit about what... Can I imagine a scenario where Nikki Haley is the Republican candidate for president, and what does that look like? And add to that, if that's something that you believe, honestly, because you could say, I could see it happening, but how would you weight it probabilistically? I would weight it probabilistically less than 5% that she's the candidate. I mean,

maybe less than 2%. I think Trump's had it locked up since August of last year. I think Trump's had it locked up, you know, since August of last year. I think the poll numbers are there and they have been, and they've basically only moved in a direction that's favored him. But I'm interested to talk about that a little bit. I mean, like what's, what's a world where Haley wins? So I think there's the obvious low hanging fruit stuff, which is like, okay, Donald Trump gets convicted somehow of something in one of these cases that he – it doesn't sound like we're going to get a verdict in the Georgia case or in the indictment in Washington, D.C. from the federal government anytime soon. So she sticks around stubbornly despite losing a bunch of primaries, and she basically waits for him to get convicted of something, and then he does. And then it's like the party's hand is forced, or there's enough primaries left on the ballot where she kind of makes a run because we know that a good chunk

of people wouldn't vote for him if he's found guilty of some of these more serious charges. But at the same time, that's also unlikely because we know these cases aren't, we're not going to get verdicts in the next two months. So to me, the kind of only, and then I guess the other low-hanging fruit is health issue. Same thing facing Biden right now. It's just like, these guys are in their late seventies. Trump has some kind of big health episode of some kind. Although again, even that, we watched this happen with Mitch McConnell. Everybody thought he was guaranteed retired after he had these freezing episodes and then nothing happened.

So it'd probably have to be something really serious for either Biden or Trump to drop out, you know, like heart attack or stroke or something where they're like actually incapacitated for the party to move on without the voters being behind them. I think both those, you know, even though they're both older and maybe not so healthy, those are both still unlikely things just from an odds perspective. But things that you're saying within the 5%, those are the biggest, the widest paths for her. I'm notably not hearing you say, this is how she wins enough electors to win the project. Exactly. I mean, those are the first two things.

And then I think the very low probability thing is she changes what she's doing as a candidate and she wins people over. How does she do that? I think she's doing a little bit of it right now, which is she actually goes after Trump the same way Trump goes after Biden, which is just really hammering his fitness for office. which is just really hammering his fitness for office. He gave her a little bit of the, the, he served a little bit of this up on a silver platter with mixing her up with Nancy Pelosi and talking about how Biden was going to send them into World War II and then talking about how he ran against Obama, which he's never run against Obama and we've already had World War II, obviously. Obama, which she's never run against Obama, and we've already had World War II, obviously.

So I think she was right to capitalize on those and put those in the headline. I think one of the things she's doing that is smart, but she's not executing very well, is the kind of conspiratorial Trump's being coronated by the mass media, DC doesn't want a real primary here. I actually think that is a good way to reach any Trump voter who's maybe movable is like, this is the rigged election kind of, you know, like, why don't they want a primary? Why doesn't Trump want to debate me? Why won't D.C., why won't the Republican party just let this primary happen?

I'm actually kind of in on that. I think that's good messaging. And if, and it's, it's both true that the media, myself included, and the Republican party are coordinating Trump. And it's also true that Trump's dodging the debates and that he's clearly the establishment figure this time, at least on paper. So why not run with that a little bit? Again, when I hear her say it, there's sort of that X factor thing where it's just, it's not very convincing. It doesn't land the way it should.

But I know that somebody is telling her to do that. And I think that that's actually one good strategy to start chipping away a little bit. It's going to be tough to have a strategy that says, I'm going to chip away at Trump's base. I think we've seen for six years that that's a really hard base to chip away from. I don't disagree really with your point, but I just think that the counterpoints are stronger. but I just think that the counterpoints are stronger. Like if I'm a Republican voter and I hear Haley saying, why don't they want us to debate? What are they hiding? The response is, what are you talking about? You're a Democrat essentially in Republican clothing. You're the center candidate. You've got the big funding by the Koch brothers. You're the establishment

candidate. I've seen the polling. We want Trump. Get out of here. No one's buying it. No one's hearing what you're selling. The irony of which is that I think the Democrats really don't want Haley to win because she would do better in a general election. 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+.

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I think we talked about that a bit when we covered this, about the dilemma between trying to campaign to win a general election while campaigning to win a primary. It's really hard to do both at the same time, and it's really, really hard for somebody with the deficit that Haley has to come up with a way to beat it while also trying to win both elections. I just have a hard time seeing how she does that without bringing unreal amounts of people that were on the bench not voting into the ballot box. To me, that's the only strategy I see. And I think that's a Hail Mary. Yeah. There's another X factor here, which people aren't really talking about, we haven't really talked about, which is Nevada, which comes before South Carolina.

And I don't even totally understand what's going on in Nevada, but it's a complete mess. It's so bizarre. There's basically two primaries happening in Nevada. Nikki Haley is running in the February 6th Nevada primary that the Secretary of State is legally required to operate. And then Trump is not running in that, but instead is running in the February 8th caucuses operated by the state Republican Party, which decided that only its caucuses are going to count for the purposes of awarding delegates, which is sort of a good example of how the party's kind of rigging it for,

quote unquote, rigging it for Trump. If you want to use political talking points like Haley might, it's going to be a total mess. Tons of people are going to be confused. There's people getting primary mail ballots that Trump won't be on. And then Nevada just basically has no influence as an early nominating state because of all this confusion, because the fact everybody's just assuming Haley's going to win this primary and Trump's going to win the caucus, which will get him all the delegates. which will get him all the delegates. And then they're just going to move on to South Carolina. A weird kind of undertold story of all this that hasn't been in the news that much that we've barely touched on, but it's super messy. And Nevada could have been a chance.

I mean, I don't know what the polling's like there, but knowing the state, it's close to being a swing state. And I'm sure Nikki Haley could have done well in Nevada if they had not totally biffed this whole thing. And instead, it's just like nobody's even caring about it. And they're just moving right along to South Carolina, where Haley was a former governor and you would think would have some strong support. But South Carolina is a super conservative state amongst Republicans. And so Trump's kind of going to clean up there. I think the other aspect about Nevada is that I'm pretty sure this is true. I just checked, but I'm pretty sure that it's a closed primary state,

which makes it harder for her to draw in independence. So I hear what you're saying, but I also think that's a pretty significant qualifier for her in that state. Do you think that doesn't really matter as much? No, I think it matters. And that's probably why she's not campaigning there. She's just bypassing the state. All she's worried aboutth. And Haley said, quote, talk to the people in Nevada. They will tell you the caucuses have been sealed up, bought and paid for a long time. That's the Trump train rolling through that. But we're going to focus on the states that are fair. So, I mean, she is basically, you know, again, nobody's talking about this. I mean, this is like another good example where I think she's doing the right thing, but the execution sucks. We're like, this is, you know, when we found out the DNC in 2016 was basically in the tank for Hillary, it was a huge thing among Bernie supporters.

Like it was all over the news. It was all anybody was talking about because they made such a big fuss about it. supporters. It was all over the news. It was all anybody was talking about because they made such a big fuss about it. Haley has this gem that I think she's speaking about in the right way, but the messaging is just kind of milquetoast. They're not doing anything with it in a way that is really meaningful. And that is what it is. The party basically rigged the primary for Trump and nobody is doing anything about it. And so she's just giving up and moving on to South Carolina where, again, she's probably going to get steamrolled. Kind of just an interesting thing. Not enough people are talking about, in my opinion. Before we move on real quick,

would you say that the biggest issue with Haley is the way she's executing the message? Or would you say that it's the way that message is getting distributed? Or why is that just, why is it not hitting if it's the right thing to do? I, for that specifically, I think they're rigging it. Yeah. That narrative. I think she's not, I think it's, I think she's not making it a primary focus of her campaign. She talks a lot about Trump's fitness and her foreign policy experience and some of her broad policy issues, which on the one hand, I think is what politicians should be doing.

It should be about policy. On the other hand, Nikki Haley's policies are not very popular amongst Republican primary voters anymore. So if she wanted to be a really crude, hardcore politician, I think she would focus way more on stuff like this. You know, one of the things that, I mean, some onlookers, pundits have said that she screwed up in Iowa, which I'm not really sure how I feel about yet. But it was basically that Trump was all over Iowa with ads that were just about Trump and like his fitness for office and how she was going to be like a no drama candidate and whatever. And it's like, you have to know your audience. I think Iowa voters or Iowa caucus goers are really kind of, they tend to be very like dialed in astute, interested voters who are actually making policy-oriented decisions. And Haley just didn't give them a real policy-focused reason to vote for them. She just said, I'm going to not be Trump,

basically. And Trump was just hammering the border stuff and Biden and fixing that and policing and crime. And then that actually played pretty well for him. So it depends what specifically you're talking about. I think in this case on just like this idea that Trump's the establishment candidate, I hear her say that. I hear some of her stuff that's just like, they don't want us to have this primary. Trump doesn't want to have this fight. But I mean, I would just be all over. I would be doing ads about this. I would be talking about it in every interview. Trump doesn't want to debate me. The party has chosen him. They're trying to coronate him. And they've done things like this in the primary that basically rigged it for him,

which again, that's not my language, but the language I would use as a politico is just like, you can feel however you want about me personally as a politician, but everybody should sense some injustice here that the Republican Party has decided that the primary doesn't matter in Nevada and we're just going to have a caucus where the results are the only thing that counts. And oh, also Trump is going to win the caucus and we're just going to have a caucus where the results are the only thing that counts. And oh, also like Trump is going to win the caucus. And we basically did that on purpose. I mean, it's like the same way Biden made South Carolina the first primary in the country for Democrats. It's just like, oh, that's weird. He did that right after he won South Carolina and it helped elevate him to the White House. I can't imagine why the Democratic Party would want to do that. It's so blatantly obvious, but I don't know. So I guess it's the

message focus. I think she's saying the right things when she talks about it, but she could be hammering it a lot more than she is. And just to bring it full circle back to the original topic, really interesting that New Hampshire said, nah, we're going first anyway. They just cut the line. States can do that. And then Biden just cleaned up regardless, which made the whole thing- Without his name on the ballot even. Right. He had never won a race in New Hampshire, which is part of the reason probably why he didn't want that to be the first state. And then they ran this kind of scrappy write-in campaign, and he won easily. And it was like, why did all of you guys just fight about the whatever? I mean, that's like a classic Democratic-

That's all we're going to talk about for the Democratic primary. Yeah, that's a classic Democratic primary thing. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. So we're coming up here on like just about an hour. I think outside of New Hampshire stuff, at least in my world, maybe the biggest news this week was the media layoffs and the kind of, I guess you could say frightening state of the media here. I want to talk a little bit about what's happening. And I'm curious. I mean, what, one of the things that I love about you, Ari, is that you're not a media person and you're not a journalist and yeah. And it it's so, I honestly think it's actually really important

for the content that we produce. Cause I so, it's all I've ever known. I mean, I, I, a sophomore in college, I was working for the school newspaper. And so I've just been in this world forever now. And sometimes it's hard to know, you know, what, it's like the, the fish in water, you know? I mean, I just, I don't know what is real and what isn't sometimes. And it's cool to get somebody's perspective on a lot of this stuff who's not so stuck in the world that I'm stuck in. But just a quick recap here. I have this. I'm pulling from an Axios article that summed it up really nicely. The Los Angeles Times laid off 120

journalists this week, more than 20% of the newsroom. They had already cut 74 newsroom positions in June, and the top two editors there resigned two weeks after the executive editor stepped down. Time Magazine on Tuesday told staff about an unspecified number of layoffs across editorial tech sales and Time Studios. I know a couple of people who work at Time, and I've heard that it is not bueno, although we haven't gotten any kind of real headcount yet. The Washington Post lost an entire newsroom worth of talent at the end of last year, and they did a buyout that eliminated 240 jobs. Condé Nast had hundreds of union workers who protested, walked off the job, and then layoffs happened and impacted about 5% of the staff, roughly 300 people. Sports Illustrated basically was gutted in this very bizarre thing where the company who owns them, Arena Group, didn't make a quarterly payment on the group that it licenses Sports Illustrated

brand to. That was worth like three and a three quarter million dollars or something, $3.75 million. And then they just had to lay a bunch of people off. There's like this very bizarre ownership structure there. Paramount told a bunch of employees that the company's planning a fresh round of layoffs. The New York Daily News editorial team walked off the job because of quote-unquote chronic cuts by its owner. And that I can definitely vouch for. I actually applied for a job in the New York Daily News before I started Tangle and worked a few days there as part of my application process. And it is a newsroom that has been gutted for many years and is just constantly facing trying times. And then Forbes newsroom started a walkout yesterday because they said

its management was union busting. And then later that afternoon, the CEO announced layoffs of roughly 3% of the company. A little bit of a trend there. Unionize, protest, get fired, it seems like. This all literally happened just this week. Everything I just read, which is totally nuts. So what the hell is going on? Why is this happening? Is it a story or is it just a story for news is essentially the question that you're asking? Yeah. I mean, first of all, does anybody care about this stuff? I don't know. I really care. I mean, I personally really care. This is part of the reason I started Tangle is because the media industry is in free fall. I have many criticisms about all of these companies I just listed and many opinions about why maybe they're failing to gain loyal readership. But I feel awful. I mean, it's a terrible thing. I've worked in several places

where layoffs happened. I know what it's like to be sitting around every Friday and wondering if you're going to have a job on Monday. I know a lot of these journalists who are being impacted by it. They're friends, they're former colleagues. Losing your job sucks. It's all just terrible, but I can't tell if anybody cares outside my little media bubble, I suppose. Well, it's also that when you're reporting, when other people who you are used to reading their reports from are being impacted by something, you know it impacts the way you report. So the media, it's just plural for mediums. It's the way that news passes through people to the population. So any disruption in that is in

itself news, but it's always, always going to be oversampled, I think. Like the noise from that's always going to be bigger than it is. Because ultimately, I guess it's hard to say, I was about to say I'm not diminishing this in any way, but I kind of am, I guess. Ultimately, we're talking about a couple hundred people. Is that national? Is that a national story? I'm not super convinced. And I'm going to push back about this idea that it could be a trend. I am a huge fan, and I know you are too, of Derek Thompson, who's a staff writer at The Atlantic. He has a podcast with The Ringer called Plain English. He was referencing this theory from Ezra Klein earlier this week that we are seeing, quote, the death of the middle in media. Because what we're talking about, the brands you listed or the organizations you listed, Sports Illustrated and LA Times, are all pretty

decently successful national brands, but they aren't global empires like, say, the New York Times, which I have their revenue from their last report up from September when their revenue went up 9.47% for that quarter. They are making billions of dollars and they have their earnings call coming up in February. They're expected to do well. They are thriving. And on the other end of it, newsletters like ours, small independent organizations with small teams that have low overhead are also thriving. I know I subscribe to about a dozen newsletters that I get. You subscribe to more. I'm sure listeners subscribe to other newsletters that aren't just Tangle. There are individual little

places that are doing well. Big places like the Times are doing well. I mean, of course, cable news is always going to be doing well. Maybe not always, but for the foreseeable. And I think what we're hearing is really less of a story about media being in arrears and in a tough spot and more certain business models in media being in a tough spot. I hope that the people that you know in these newsrooms are going to be able to find other places for them, but I do believe that they will. I think there's going to be opportunity for the ecosystem to absorb those people and find new models that fill that market gap. There's so many sports newsletters now that are absolutely taking off. I don't even know about most of them, but I subscribe to like three. So people who work at Sports Illustrated,

I think are going to be able to, there's a market need for them. So we're just going to be witnessing a bit of a shift. We're seeing some turbulence. That's my read anyway. Yeah, I disagree. I think it's a trend. I think it's really bad. I think the media world's splintering for sure. But like, you know, 200 people getting laid off at Los Angeles Times or whatever, all 200 of those people are not going to be able to go start a newsletter that gets 5,000 subscribers or whatever. I mean, a lot of them are just going to leave journalism and never come back. And the state of the industry is going to scare off people who are interested in becoming journalists who want to go get a J school degree, whatever, or work at a school paper and come out. I do think you're right that it's a crisis in the

middle. I think that that's true. I think the middle is really big though. I think the New York Times is doing really well. And I think Derek's right about that. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, places like that, they have really good business models, but there's very few of them. There's like five or six, even the Washington Post struggling. And they have Jeff Bezos. They have unlimited pocketbook and arguably the greatest businessman of our generation, and he can't make it work. He can't. And again, I think there's some reason for it. I think the lack of trust in the media is hurting a lot of these legacy media outlets. And I think a lot of that lack of trust is sort of their own doing. But I also think there's just the splintering of it, the amount of free media there

is. The stuff that we do, the aggregation where we're repurposing other people's content is also something that we only exist with them yeah yeah that it's like that kind of stuff also does there's no doubt it hurts them and i'm cognizant of that um it's why i tell readers all the time especially local news you should be paying for but we get so many people who write in there why are you linking to a paywalled article at the wall street journal or the Washington Post or New York Times? I'm like, because they're the people who reported it. So I'm going to credit them and cite their article. And if you don't like the paywall, then you should pay for it. Free news is not something that can exist everywhere. The ad market's not big enough, and the ad market can't support really well-sourced journalism where a big, thriving media operation can both employ great journalists and then defend itself for the work that it does. I mean, you need legal teams and lawyers and all that stuff. So I think it's worrisome. I think the local journalism being hollowed out is more worrisome than the national stuff. But there's fewer media jobs now. I will say to your point about

the relative success of smaller outfits like us. I do hear from younger people, younger journalists, younger writers, people who are college journalists or whatever. Some of them subscribe to Tangle, they reach out, they say, Hey, I want to talk. And I'll, you know, I have zoom calls with them and stuff, which is really fun. It's awesome meeting kids who are coming up. You know, I'm not that old, but when I was their age, uh, you know, I, I did that too. I reached out to random people and it was so cool when people would take my calls and talk to me. And I've really, really, really tried to be open and pass that on. And I've found myself now, people start to ask me, what do you think I should do? Where should I apply? What, like,

how do I make a career out of this? And I tell them, you should go independent, honestly. I mean, if you can go get experience in a big newsroom, you should do that because working for an editor, I mean, I wouldn't be who I was today if I hadn't had that experience. And I learned so much from having good editors and being in newsrooms and getting good at deadline writing and all that stuff and learning what it looked like when I screwed a story up and what it didn't, you know, what it looked like when I nailed a story. So definitely go do that, but build your own following as soon as possible. Because if you want a career that's actually sustainable, the way to do it in the future, I think is going to be having the safety net of like, you know, 500, a thousand people who will pay for your work and care about

it. And that's all it takes. 1,000 people paying five bucks a month is 60 grand a year. And now you have a salary and an actual, you can go make ends meet in other ways. But having that is really critical. And that's become my advice because you can't rely anymore on going and getting a job at these big media publications, which is sad and scary, but it's sort of the reality of where we're at. And I can cede some ground there because like you said, this is more your world than mine. You've got the decades of experience understanding how to come up in the business. I think that's the most concerning part is the idea of these mentorship models that have been existing to train people to become the next leaders in media

getting majorly disrupted. But I think the place where we can find a lot of common ground is that I think what we're seeing isn't a terrible story for news media. I think it's a terrible story for news media businesses. And I think that's an important distinction to make. Yeah, that is a good distinction to make. Making a business is really, really tough. It's really tough. And making it successful and sustainable is really tough. And doing it at scale is really tough. I mean, I'm super proud of the fact that I created four journalism jobs with Tangle and now we have like a team of employees.

It took so much to get here and we had to be so careful and do it so slowly. I can't imagine doing this for a 200 person newsroom and being able to scale it successfully and make it sustainable. I mean, you have to do an unbelievable amount of traffic and attention and subscription numbers. It's so, so hard. And there's no way to do it without taking investment upfront, without bringing in a bunch of money. And then you have the investors hanging over your head

and their incentives, and it just gets messy really, really quick. This is why. I mean, it's not a good business. If you want to make money, you should not try and go start a media company. Your odds of succeeding are extremely low. So your advice for people that are graduating with journalism degrees

is start your own business, but also don't start your own business. I think it's get a following that is loyal to you and build out your own personal following. So you can supplement whatever job you have with your own personal writing stuff and have a group of people. And you have the safety net where if you ever get laid off, you can just turn on this subscription flow like, hey, I lost my job, but I'm going to keep writing here. Give me five bucks a month, pay for it, whatever. And if you find that you can grow that, if you can really grow that and turn it into

a business, then you can. But I do think that part's really hard. I mean, I feel incredibly blessed that it happened to me. I think I got really, really lucky. My timing was really, really good and I had a unique idea. really, really lucky. My timing was really, really good and I had a unique idea. But now, if I were to do Start Tangle right now, I don't think I'd have the same success that I had four or five years ago. The market is so saturated with these sort of alternative, independent media outlets now. So I don't even know really what the next thing is.

But I do think that it's super, super valuable to have your own personal brand and following in today's media ecosystem. And I think that that's a really good way to have a safety net basically. Well, I guess we're both going to have to strap in and see. I know I'm going to reference Derek Thompson one more time because I think he's just phenomenal at writing and talking about news media in general, media businesses. And the way he puts it is it's a history of rebundling, debundling bundles. So if we've seen a lot of this middle-sized tranche of journalist entities or journalism entities break off into smaller audiences that are capturing smaller and smaller

slices. I think probably newsletter aggregations on the horizon. Even just this is a newsletter arm, this is a YouTube channel arm, and things that start to grow and blob out from there. That's my guess, but at least in the short term, for sure, it doesn't look like it's going to get better before it gets worse. So, hey, thanks for creating a media job for me. Appreciate it. And with that, we're going to pivot into our grievances corner. We got to do the airings of grievances to wrap this up. We're over an hour. The airing of grievances. My son tells me your company stinks. Oh, God. Let's do rock, paper, shoot on Riverside for who goes first really quick. Can you see me?

Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Wow. I felt like you just cheated ari went paper and i went no i was gonna go paper right away because i figured you were a rock guy all right what do you want first or second um let me get first because i feel like your thing is going to be way more interesting um but i also i think i put this in gear I did. I also want to start by doing a meta grievance against us from last time we did this, which is that this has been bothering me since we published the episode. Costanza when we intro'd this segment because it wasn't George Costanza that did the airing of grievances. It was his dad, Frank, played by Jerry Stiller. So apologies to Seinfeld nerds. We'll do better. We hear you. We'll do better. Wow. Good to know. Anyway, my complaint- I don't like when you air grievances about us. That sucked. Take it. I think I'm the one who said it. So you can push it on me. Is that all

right? All right, go ahead. This is the worst airing of grievances corner so far. See, now you're doing it too. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. Look, here's my thing. This past week, this post was put into the Burlington subreddit on Reddit. I live in Vermont. My wife and I moved up to Vermont in June. We're building a house up near the mountains, but we're not there yet. So we are living in this apartment complex in Burlington. And Burlington's a wonderful city. Love it here.

Its chief problem that it's facing right now, like a lot of cities, is availability for housing. The amount of available apartments in Burlington is way below national average. So we are living in this complex that's getting built up. It's new. We're in a building. There's another building that's next to ours. Across the parking lot from where our building is, another apartment building is being built. Behind that, another apartment building is being built. So they're really trying to develop fast, which I think is what's needed. And this is a post that was on the Burlington subreddit about this complex area. If you're considering moving to the Cambrian Way complex, consider your tolerance to

noise. This property has been and will forever be a construction zone. The noise pollution is a waking nightmare that no one warned me about. If you're located anywhere near the garbage, trucks come six days a week, multiple times a day, starting early. I once clocked a truck at 3am. It's currently 8.45 and the third truck of the day is outside my window crashing dumpsters loudly. Management is nice. We'll respond with a shrug and then increase your rent. Before living in Burlington, I was in downtown Philly, which I'm not joking, was quieter in comparison. Edit 945, another dump truck.

So my complaint is about this complaint. And I can first acknowledge that it is noisy and it is annoying to live in a place where there's noise around you all the time. I do think they're exaggerating with this. It's louder than South Philly thing or downtown Philly. You live in Philly, so I think you can probably attest to the fact that it's not exactly quieter all the time. It's loud in South Philly. I've not visited you yet in Burlington, but I have my doubts about what this person just wrote. you yet in Burlington, but I have my doubts about what this person just read.

And here's the thing. I think they are misdiagnosing the issue. First of all, got to say this first. We need these apartment buildings to be built. It's a good thing, and it's going to be noisy, and that's part of the deal. You lived currently, like I do, the person who's posting this, in a building that required a lot of construction for it to be made, and that disrupted people around them, and now it's your turn. Sorry, that's going to happen. Wow, you're such a yimby, dude. A little bit, I know. But I also, there is noise. I would love to not have to be woken up at 6.15 every day to the beeping of a truck.

But I think the diagnosis is not the garbage trucks. It's that cranes when they're operating are always beeping. And it's always this crane. It's what they're hearing. It's not a truck. It's anytime there's like a cherry picker that is going up to bring people with siding on that they're going to bolt to a building. It has to make this big beeping noise. And I feel like the grievance to share with this person is that it probably doesn't need to beep when it's on its way up and down. That's most of the noise. And I guess we should try to get it so trucks don't beep as loud. Not trucks, cranes, cherry pickers when they're lifting people up. That's kind of annoying. But also,

that's part of the issue. You live in a city. It's a small city, but there's going to be some noise. I don't know. Maybe I'm a little cantankerous, maybe a little too yimby, but that's my grievance. I appreciate this grievance. You saw a Reddit post about your apartment building you didn't like. It's a very nice online airing of grievances. You just described this situation from your perspective about the crane and the beeping. And now I think this person might be right that it does sound louder to me than it is in my house in South Philly. I mean, I don't have a crane or a truck of constantly beeping at all hours of the night. We have the airport. So there's planes flying over all the time and we got a lot of helicopters. And then there's like the classic South Philly fighting and like, you know, all my lovely scumbag Philly friends out in the streets being drunken and stupid and screaming at each other. But the loud beeping crane all the time,

I could see that being kind of terrible. It honestly is. They're kind of right about that. But I don't know. I think my point is... I like that you decided that this person was your grievance, but you basically agree with everything they wrote, except that where the beeping sound was coming from.

And also, I'll let you know that I think Burlington has most places beat when it comes to noise from air traffic. Our airport is extremely small, but there is an Air National Guard location in Burlington, and there's fighter jets all the time, and they're super loud in the middle of the day, but also it's part of the cost you pay. This, this is what I'm saying. It's like, you can, you can sort of be annoyed, but like, eh, you live in a society, it's a civilization, there's going to be noise around you. And I'm sorry. All right. I'm not sure. I think I might agree with the Reddit post. I think I might be on the Reddit poster side in nine years, but I still appreciate the grievance. All right. This is mine for this week. This really, really pissed me off. This is one of the most frustrating things that's ever happened to me. So I went on this trip to Bolivia. We're talking about Bolivia again. My friends have been making fun of me because I won't shut up about Bolivia.

It happens. You came back from a cool trip. It's going to be part of it. Yeah. I'm going to talk about it a bunch. So everybody get used to it. Yeah. There's noise. We live in a society. Deal with it. Okay. So I have this whole, all my plans get derailed, whatever. I miss my buddy's wedding in Mexico. I'm back in Philly. I'm flying from Philly to Miami, from Miami to Santa Cruz. And my flight from Philly to Miami, because all my plans changed, I had to get it late in the game, is on Frontier Airlines. Now, for those of you who are not on the East Coast, Frontier is a budget airline, we'll call it. That's about the nicest way you could put it. It's maybe one of the worst airlines known to man,

but it flies out of a few airports on the East Coast to a few places on the East Coast. As far as I know, I don't think it goes anywhere like west of the Mississippi River. You know what you're getting into. You're expecting the seats are going to be tight. There's no Wi-Fi. There's no movies. You got to pay for your bag. You got to pay for your bag you got to pay for your seat you get hit with all whatever i needed a flight i needed it cheap i needed it quick frontier all i had to do is get to miami so it's a couple hours before my flight leaves i think i had like a three o'clock flight or something and it's like 11 maybe 11 a.m and i get an email from Frontier and a text message and a phone call that says, your flight is delayed two hours. And I live 15 minutes from the Philadelphia airport. Like I'm saying, I hear the planes overhead all the time. So I'm like, oh, sweet. All right. I was crammed

for work in Tangle. I was going to go work in the airport, on the plane, whatever. So I'm like, great. I make myself a lunch. I'm casually, I'm packing slowly. I'm not rushing now. I'm doing some work. I'm just hanging out. I get this message, get the phone call, get the voicemail, whatever. So then, I kid you not, literally 2.35, maybe 25 minutes before the original flight's about to take off. I get another text message from Frontier that says, your flight is now scheduled to depart on time at 3 PM. And I'm like, what? What? You undelayed a flight and you did it 25 minutes, like before the original flight time. So I'm like, oh shit. So I freak out. I've like drop everything. I throw a bunch of dishes. I'm calling frontier,

right? I call frontier. They don't have a phone line. Huh? Think about that for a second. How did they call you? No, no. They, they called me through through, I got an automated robot telling me things. So I started calling the number that called me and it's not a real line. And then I find out that Frontier only has online chat and WhatsApp text messaging to contact the airline. And so I go try and do both and neither of them are real people. They're just totally automated things throwing me in a circle. So I call an Uber. I pack my bag. I'm just trying to get down to the airport. In my head, I'm hoping, okay, they're saying it's on time, but there's no way it's actually going to leave on time.

I pull off an unbelievable feat, get all my stuff together, get in an Uber, get down to the airport in sub 20 minutes. So I'm like walking into the Philadelphia airport at like two 58 for my now three Oh five flight. That's back on time. And I run to the frontier counter. I'm like, Hey, you know, I just, I'm here to check in for this flight. And they're like, Oh, the flight's gone. And I'm just like, what do you mean the flight's gone? Like it took off. It was on time. And I was like, I have like text messages from you here. Like, how can you guys tell people like, well, you're not supposed to leave the airport when the flight gets late. I'm like, I didn't leave the airport. I never came to the airport because

I live 15 minutes away. And you told me the flight was delayed two hours, two hours before the flight. Yes. And then all these people start busting into the airport behind me who all did the exact same thing I did. And it was like, there was going to be a riot inside the Frontier Airlines corridor of the airport. People were like, were you on the Miami flight? I'm like, yeah, I was on the Miami flight. They said it was delayed.

We're all like getting each other fired up. They're like, and so, but the lady couldn't rebook me. She's like, okay, we can send you out on a flight tomorrow morning. I'm like, I need to get to Miami for a 10 PM flight that I'm taking to Bolivia. I can't fly out tomorrow morning. You're destroying all my plans. So I freak out. I go to every other airline in the Philadelphia airport. I'm on my phone. I'm walking desk to desk, just trying to get from Philly to either Fort Lauderdale or Miami in like the next hour. And there's zero flights I can get on. And I circle back and come

back to Frontier. And I'm like, you guys have to fix this. This is so insane that you've done this. And the lady's like, we can rebook you on a flight tomorrow morning. And I'm like, all right, I'm not going to give up, but I'll take the rebooking. Right. And she's like, okay, it's going to be $95. And I'm like, what? Like, no, I'm not paying for it. So I like totally, you know, not, I wasn't, I wasn't a dick, but I was like, absolutely not. I'm sorry. Like, I understand you're doing your job, but there's zero. So she like calls her manager and the manager comes down and he's like, there's this whole line of people. Everybody's all pissed off. The manager like gets on the, he's like, if you were on the Miami flight, we've decided we're

going to rebook you free of cost, which is like, it's like some big gift to us. We're all like, oh, thank you so much. And so we're sitting there. We know we screwed you over so bad, but we're going to actually fix it without charging you more. Yeah. So she prints out my ticket, right? She prints out my ticket for the rebooking for the next day. And whenever you fly budget airlines, what I always do at least is I never say that I have a check bag or a carry on bag because you want to try and get through security and not pay for it. Like that's the game you're trying to play, obviously. So she prints out my ticket on the ticket, like big, bold letters. It says no carry on. And so as she's handing me the ticket,

I'm staying there with like my book bag on and this giant luggage that has like my motocross boots, a motorcycle helmet, like the huge 36 inch thing of luggage. She just looks at me and she's like, this says you have no luggage. You're going to need to pay for that. And I was just like, like, don't even just, please don't like, I'll deal with this tomorrow. You know, like we don't have to, I like, I was so appalled that she like called me out on it, even though she was totally right that I was trying to cheat the system and get in. And, uh, yeah, so it completely blew up my whole travel plans. And then, um, I did not get to leave Philadelphia that day. I couldn't find any other flights to get to Miami. I lost the whole day of my trip in Bolivia. And the next day,

I just got a flight on American Airlines. I went home that night and I booked a flight on American instead of Frontier. And then when I woke up in the morning, this is not a joke. I woke up in the morning and I had a text message from Frontier that my 8 a.m. flight to Miami had been delayed 11 hours until 7 p.m. that night. And I was like, I'm so glad that I booked this flight on a mail. I would have literally just gone back into the cycle and missed the same flight again, or they would have undelayed it and I would have missed it because I wasn't going to go sit in the airport for 10 hours. So yeah, my grievance is Frontier Airlines and undelaying flights, which is a totally ridiculous thing that should never be allowed. Well, here's my question for you.

Do you think the flight was ever actually delayed? I'll put my tinfoil hat on for a sec. Do you think maybe they knowingly overbooked the flight, which happens a lot? They got the sense people are going to show up for it. And they thought, how do we thin the hurt here a little bit? Oh my God, dude. I didn't even think about that. That's honestly a really good plausible theory. Maybe. We have talked about before how the FAA is struggling. Airlines are in a little bit of a... And then if we don't riot about paying for the rebooking, they get all the money from the people who have to rebook and pay for it.

This could be like an investigatory journalism piece right here. Hey, send us your experiences. If you've ever been on a flight that was delayed and then undelayed, send your story to staff at retangle.com. We'd love to hear about it. Maybe follow up onangle.com. We'd love to hear about it. Maybe follow up on this. Yeah. If I find out that that's true, I'm going to file a class action lawsuit. I've had the opposite problem happen to me where I've been traveling internationally and I've been told, but I'm on my connecting flight, so I have no wifi or anything. And when I land, I get a text

from my flight that I'm connecting from that said, hey, good news. We've just rebooked you to this flight that's eight hours from now without telling me because they thought that I was going to miss the connection. And I get to the connection desk on time. They're like, oh, you're not on this flight. And I said, no, I was. And they said, no, no, no. Your ticket says you were rebook booked on the next one. I said, let me on. And I could see the plane's still there. Just let me on the plane. And they're like, oh, no, this is actually taking off.

And then while I'm having the conversation, they've closed the jetway door. And it was the most infuriating moment of that year that I experienced. But they shouldn't, they get away with everything. And unless you actually riot at them, yeah, they'll just move on. That would kill me. All right, well, I feel better now that I got to get that off my chest.

So the airing of Grievances Corner is already doing some good for my mental health. Well, for you, it seems like it was a 50% success rate this week. I'll work on it. I'll try to get madder about stuff. I'll try to get experienced things that are worse. And's not even that you were just kind of i think you were just wrong i think the guy you tried to put on blast was just like right and you just as you

explain your grievance it just turned out that maybe you were the asshole not him well i think we don't have to relitigate it. I've made my point. I've said my piece. All right. We got to get out of here. I'll see you guys soon. Bye, everybody.

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 Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. 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.