Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: Issac and Ari talk about election night thoughts, a possible red bubble, and play some games.

Episode Date: November 3, 2024

Isaac and Ari share their thoughts about potential election night results, the potential we are in a red bubble, play some game, and talk with editor Will Kaback and executive producer Jon Lall. And as always, the Airing of Grievances.Ad-free podcasts are here!For the last few years, our daily podcast has been ad-supported. In that time, we’ve gotten complaints from our listeners saying they find these ads annoying and would happily pay a subscription to get ad-free podcasts — and we finally launched it. You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up! Once you subscribe, you’ll get instructions on how to add the premium version of the podcast to your feed, and then every time we publish a podcast you'll have an ad-free version in your feed (plus, you'll get premium, paywalled podcast content).Check out Episode 8 of our podcast series, The Undecideds. Please give us a 5-star rating and leave a comment!You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Help share Tangle.I'm a firm believer that our politics would be a little bit better if everyone were reading balanced news that allows room for debate, disagreement, and multiple perspectives. If you can take 15 seconds to share Tangle with a few friends I'd really appreciate it. Email Tangle to a friend here, share Tangle on X/Twitter here, or share Tangle on Facebook here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

Coming up, happy Halloween. What are we doing? We talk Michigan. Are we in a red bubble? Positive signs for both campaigns. We bring in Will K. back. We bring in John Law. The whole crew is here. We're hanging out. We've got some West Wing games. And can I name the states that are least accurate at predicting the president? It turns out I'm not very good at any of the games. And then some real-time live questions from the audience. You guys are going to enjoy this one. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast,

the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. We're ripping our first ever live podcast because it's election season and we didn't feel like we had enough work to do. I'm here with managing editor Ari Weitzman. Ari, how are you doing, man? work to do. I'm here with managing editor Ari Weitzman. Ari, how are you doing, man? Pretty good. It is an unseasonably warm Halloween here in Vermont. Very spookily warm, but not going to complain about it. It's going to get cold fast. So I know that a lot of people will be listening to this on Sunday in November, but we're on the precipice of November here, but we're on the precipice of November here, October 31st, Halloween night. You have any plans?

I have no actual like legit Halloween plans, except I'm going to hang out at home and pray for trick-or-treaters because we just moved in our old neighborhood. We had no trick-or-treaters and it was such a bummer. It actually like legitimately bummed me out. Uh, right now, FYI, Pennsylvania is in the middle of, or Philadelphia is in the middle of one of the longest streaks it's ever had without rain. And it's just been unseasonably warm, which is a bummer. So, uh, I'm kind of living through that experience right now is like, uh, everything's dry and hot, and it doesn't feel like it should feel on Halloween. But I'm super Phoebe and I went and loaded up on candy

because we heard a bunch of people trick or treat on our block. And if that's true, I'm going to be really pumped about it. Because Halloween is one of my favorite holidays for sure. I'm definitely ornery about trick oror-treating happening too early in the day and about municipalities that schedule it and sometimes schedule it on days that aren't actually Halloween because they're worried about it being a school night or they're going, children are going to houses that are unfamiliar. I'm very old man shakes fist at cloud with that. Kids need to go out and go to houses that are a little unfamiliar, learn who the mean people are in their neighborhoods, get out, eat too much candy, have a bad day at school the next day. It's part of the experience.

But I won't say any of that. It's pointless. So for those of you who are tuning in, you might notice smaller than usual audience for some of our live stream. We are testing this out because we have election night coming up, which is a little nerve wracking. We have a bunch of interviews and a bunch of live streams that we're planning to run on election night. And we wanted to get a test run before we went big with blasting you know, blasting this off to our entire mailing list. So I appreciate those of you who are tuning in.

If you have any questions or comments that you want to drop in the chat, we'll get those directly here on our streaming platform. I'm in the incredible position of having producer powers and also being on the, uh, on being on the podcast. So I, like while we were testing earlier, I was just making banners that can just undermine Ari, which is incredible. Um, it's every editor's worst nightmare, truly. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, really nice. Um, so I'll be creating banners throughout the show. They might look something like this, you know, something really, really nice and fun that we can just pivot to whenever we want. This is going to be kind of the vibe of what we're doing is me playing around a little bit. But we do have some actual news and some stuff to cover.

So in order to do that, I wanted to bring in our trusty editor and communications lead, Will Kabak, who we talk about all the time on the podcast, usually throw him under the bus. But today we're going to bring him in to do some real podcasting. We're going to talk a bit about this Friday edition that is coming out tomorrow. Some of the stuff that's going on in the final days of this race, including some of my closing thoughts about the election. So, uh, Will Kabak, welcome to the show. What's up everybody. Good to be here.

Thanks for dropping in. Wow. Smooth. That was first, first test test down i nailed that transition just you can't let him get too confident will you have to side with me because imagine on election night me having all the controls and also being able to have alcohol and look i could even do this oh john's in here now hey john whoa oh look that. I was meant to be in the background. Imaginary producer, not supposed to be on the live stream, but I can just do that whenever I want.

All right. This is the real answer to the question of Isaac. Why don't you run for president? Because you should not have that power. I can't have that power. All right, boys, we got a lot to cover. There's a ton going on. I want to start in Michigan. This is, in my opinion, one of the most important and kind of, I guess, the most important at the intersection of things that are very important and things that are unknown in this election. Michigan, to me, is like right at the intersection of that. I'm publishing something tomorrow, which is basically a, you know, 25 closing thoughts about the election. And one of the points that I'm going to make in tomorrow's newsletter and podcast is just that I have no idea what the Kamala Harris

campaign is doing in Michigan right now. And I think they might actually blow it. I genuinely think they might actually blow it. And the setup for this, I guess, the comparison that I'll just give is I've been following the news there closely. I've made this prediction that Trump is going to lose Pennsylvania but win Michigan. I'm not 100% sure about this. You know, it's kind of a gut thing because the polls are so close. But Donald Trump is touring the state right now talking about how pro-Muslim he is. He's talking

about how he's going to end the war in Gaza. They're leaking stuff to the Times of Israel, which has published a story that was everywhere yesterday, where Trump's reportedly telling Netanyahu that he's got to wrap the war up before Trump gets into office. He's touting the endorsement of a Muslim mayor in Michigan. And the Kamala Harris campaign is trotting out Liz Cheney, who's like a meme of a warmonger. And then Bill Clinton, who spent basically three minutes riffing yesterday or the day before about how Muslim American and Arab American voters should understand why all the death in Gaza is happening. And it's because of Hamas. And what felt to me like a kind of

patronizing speech toward Arab American voters, especially young Arab American voters. That doesn't the Trump strategy seems a lot better to me than Harris's if there's a few hundred thousand votes on the table to win. And yeah, I don't know. That's how I'm setting the table. I don't know how you guys feel about this, but I'd be getting pretty jittery if I were her right now. I mean, for me, the questions remain the same and they remain unanswered. What you're pointing at is a couple indicators of how to answer those questions. And to me, it's two of them. One is something one of the readers asked earlier this week, which was how do we think all of the voters in the Republican primary who cast their votes for Haley after she dropped out are going to vote

this Tuesday? To which the answer is, we don't know. We have no idea. We have guesses and we have indicators, but that's the best that we have. And the flip side of that question is the one that you're kind of answering here, which is what is that uncommitted vote in Michigan going to do that showed up in proportionally similar numbers in Michigan during the Democratic primary as protest Haley votes did in Michigan during the Republican primary? And the answer is, we don't know. But the indicators point to, they don't look like they're going to budge away from this position they're taking of, we don't think the Democratic Party is doing enough to meet us where we are. They're taking us for granted. They think just because they're a little bit more to our side than the Republicans

are means that they're going to get our votes no matter what. It's not true. We like neither party. We're willing to let the Democrats know that we're dissatisfied. And I've always thought that that has been a negotiating tactic that won't be followed through on by as many people, but I'm getting less and less convinced of that as the days go on. And that's my read. Yeah, I think, Isaac, you've written about how one of Trump's great strengths as a candidate is that he can kind of be all things to all people. And I think we're kind of seeing that with how he's trying to appeal to people on both sides of this Gaza issue, specifically in Michigan, where the inherent contradictions in his position aren't really sticking to him in the way that they might another candidate. I'm sympathetic to the conundrum that the Harris campaign is in with how

they have to position themselves on this issue. But I fully agree that the Liz Cheney, Bill Clinton surrogate approach is not one that is likely to work out for them, kind of given the demographics that they're working with. So I'm highly skeptical of how they've approached it in the past month, the last few weeks leading up to election day. And I think that they're in big trouble there, too. One of the things I'll just say about this with regards to Michigan is Democrats do have a strategy. It's not like they're just ignoring Arab American voters. They seem to believe that they can juice turnout among Republican moderates who won't vote for Trump. And they're going to the suburbs of traditionally Republican areas in Michigan and trying to talk to those voters. And I think

that explains the Liz Cheney and the Bill Clinton. And that could honestly be a good strategy. I mean, we won't really know. I don't, I won't know until election day. I mean, that's, what's going to prove whether it's a good strategy or not, but if they lose Michigan, especially if they win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, or they win Pennsylvania or Wisconsin and lose Michigan, the way that they handled the uncommitted vote is going to be the story of this election. And I think it'll be overblown, I'm sure, because at the end of the day, way, way more of the vote in Michigan and these swing states is dependent on things like immigration and the economy. But we will never hear the end of what the Harris campaign did. The postmortems on how they navigated the African-American vote will literally go on for months if she loses Michigan. And that's a decisive part of this election. part of this election. I'll say this, just like, I feel like it's hard to figure out what's up and what's down right now, because there's just so many narratives and so much information that the

zone's just being flooded with. And I had this thought yesterday, and I'm including it in some of the stuff that we're going to talk about in the podcast and the newsletter tomorrow. some of the stuff that we're going to talk about in the podcast and the newsletter tomorrow. I have the inklings of a theory that I'll flesh out in real time with you guys, which is that I think we might be living in, Americans more generally, you know, the pundit class, the business class, corporate America, basically everybody except like the quote unquote real working class Americans in the Rust Belt missed Trump and missed his rise. And the explanation for how that happened was that we were all living in this bubble, this bubble that insulated us from the perspectives of people who might support or vote for Trump. And because we all existed and lived around people who only supported Democrats or liberals or thought Trump was this abhorrent character, we all missed his rise. Without passing judgment on whether that theory is accurate or holds up now years later,

I'll just say that I think if there's a bubble right now, it's actually a Trump bubble. In 2016, we didn't know. He was still sort of a less defined person and character. We were figuring out who he was. In the last eight years, we have been living in Trump's world. I mean, we are living in Trump's world. The entire political apparatus of both parties revolves around him. Harris's campaign is about an anti-Trump campaign. Biden's presidency was about defeating Trump and Trump's candidacy is obviously about Trump. And the information ecosystems, I think, are now skewed towards him. Twitter, which is where so many journalists get their talking points and so much of the media seedlings are put into the ground, is just very obviously tilted towards Trump right-wing

talking points now. I mean, I have experienced and seen this, but now we have actual reporting about it. We're talking about like, we're not debating whether Harris should, Trump should sit down with 60 Minutes in the final days of the election. We're talking about whether Kamala Harris should go on Joe Rogan's podcast. Like we are in the red bubble. And I think there's a chance that our perception of things are skewed, including my own, given I picked Trump to win. And that like, we're going to come out of this in a few weeks and realize that Harris actually won the election by a decent margin. And the support and enthusiasm for it was obvious and was there the whole time. And he's been there since 2020 and 2022 since Roe fell.

And that we were just like all too obsessed with Trump and sort of ascribe some kind of superpower to him that allowed him to just defy all political gravity. I don't know if that theory is going to be true, but it's the inkling of a theory that I have going into the final days of this election. I think you definitely have to define what you mean by we, when you say we're living in a red bubble right now, because we kind of live in a tangle-ish bubble, not really a bubble, I guess, like a spider with tendrils that goes into different bubbles.

But I think a lot of people are in their media ecosystems where they're learning about the things that reaffirm their worldviews. And we spend all of our time trying to move from bubble to bubble, like us and the people who relate to tangle all the time. So we have a little bit of a skewed impression of the way that most people have an impression. So it's maybe what you mean by us living in that bubble is like the 20% or so of people that try to actively step outside of their echo chambers are inundated with this narrative about Trumpism and the current edge that that breed of conservatism has in popular thought. But I don't know if that carries over to the other like big bubbles that exist. But maybe

part of what you're saying is like that sort of informs the way the narratives are formed within those bubbles. And now it gets kind of meta and I've lost track of it, but, um, really quick. I, I, I think I can answer the question. I mean, when I say we're living in this red bottle bubble, I do, I, I mean, the opinion makers, I mean, um, not just mainstream media, but the sort of fractured, more independent media like the one we exist in, all the independent influencers, like, I mean, from Jake Paul, who endorsed Trump today, all the way to Joe Rogan, who's brought on Trump and J.D. Vance to Theo Vaughn to like all, you know, everybody, like the CNN, MSNBC, Fox News obsess over Trump,

the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal obsess over Trump. All these influencers, like these alternative media sources, they obsess over Trump. That's, that's like my point is like, it's just Trump. And I think that has created a different, it's given him like a different power and gravitas in the election where it's like, it's hard him like a different power and gravitas in the election where it's like, it's hard for people to imagine he's going to lose. And again, I think he's going to win, but I'm just like second guessing my own biases and gut that maybe actually I'm just falling victim to this kind of new reality. And that actually, the polls are right, Harris is in the lead, they might even be underestimating the Harris support. And Trump hasn't won an

election and the Republican Party has underperformed in every election since 2016. So like, why are we betting on him? Again, I don't know. I'm not even sure I believe this. I'm just, it's just like, no, I'm not even sure I believe this. I'm just, it's just like, it's, I had the thought and I'm having trouble shaking it. Well, I think another aspect of this that I know you also are going to talk about in the piece, Isaac, is the role that X is going to play

since Elon Musk has taken over it. And there was a Wall Street Journal report that came out this week that was basically investigating what kind of content X was going to show you when you created a new account and even indicated apolitical interests and the kind of things that you wanted to see. And by a two-to-one margin, it was pro-Trump content over pro-Harris content. I know that as a frequent user of X, I've seen that in both the recommended things that I get, the recommended follows that I

get. I think that on one hand, X is its own bubble. And we know that that tends to be clustered and not very representative of the overall population. But I do think it's still a massive platform. And I think having somebody like Musk throwing the entire weight of his influence behind this operation and changing the platform in such a meaningful way, I think it could have an effect. And I think that it could be contributing to the bubble that you described, whether that's going to be enough to overpower some of the other advantages that I think Trump has in this election, I'm not sure. But I think social media remains just such a potent force in all of this. And I think with each successful election, it's going to continue to be more and more influential.

I have just a quick thought tied to, I guess it's related to X and just the absolute kind of shitstorm that it's turned into from my view. It's not just that I think Musk is thumbing the scales a little bit algorithmically, which I think is, I mean, I don't want to say it's indisputable, but it seems very obvious. It seems apparent to me, at least when I go on the platform, I have a very mixed, obvious, by the nature of my work, the people I follow, the posts I engage with, who I respond to, it is like eclectic and diverse. And when I go to that for you tab, and even when I'm in the following tab, it is just like, always 90% of the time, the first few things I see are pro Trump type posts, content that, you know, I ascribe to being something that would make you think better Trump and worse of Democrats.

And the reality of that being the case is that the people who are promoting that stuff, their following grows. And so the other thing that's happening now, it's not just that like your average user goes in and they get bombarded with more pro-Trump stuff. It's that the people who post more pro-Trump stuff are rewarded on the platform with more engagement and more following and a larger audience. And that has like a, like the, the long tail of that I think is really, really important because it doesn't just impact them on Twitter impacts them if they're promoting a YouTube channel or a newsletter, whatever it is, like platforms like the free press, or, you know, Tucker Carlson subscribers only show,

or, you know, Ben Shapiro's podcast, like, those places are benefiting from that not just on X, but also on other platforms. And I don't think we really understand the reach and the importance of that quite yet, but I suspect it plays a bigger role than maybe we think when we're talking about the differences between 2016 and 2020 and what we're experiencing now. So I don't know. I mean, I'm unsure how it's going to play out, but it feels hard to imagine a world where it's not super relevant in the future. view the candidates in this election after eight years of knowing who Donald Trump is and having that be something that kind of dominates the way that we see this race. I don't know if it's going to be enough time to have an effect to try to shape the way people are going to make their decisions. I agree with you that long-term for the future of the way people form their opinions

online, that's going to matter a lot. I'm just not sure if that long tail is going to, if it's here yet before November 5th. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada,

which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. For those of you who are just tuning in on the live stream here, I want to say welcome.

Thanks for showing up. We are going to be doing a big election night stream that's starting probably around seven or eight o'clock on election night. And so we wanted to get a little test run in with a smaller audience than the massive Tangle audience. So we've sent this live stream out to a few people. And obviously, those of you who follow us on YouTube have dropped in.

If you have questions, thoughts, things you want to hear us talk about, we're going to wrap up the podcast today with some listener Q&A. So feel free to drop something in the chat. I'm playing around with the way we produce stuff and trying to figure out how this whole live stream thing works before

election night. I can do stuff like this, like show William Fleming's question on the screen, and then we can talk about it and answer it. So we'll get to that, William. I think it's a comment that I actually want to address. So feel free to drop something in the chat. And towards the end of the show, we'll try and do that. We've got Will Kabak, our editor here for a few more minutes, and he's not normally on the TanglePod. So before he gets out of here, I know this is something you have thoughts about, Will, and it's something, again, that we're going to be talking about, I'm sure, up to election day. Everybody is just clinging on to hope at this point, whether you're a Trump supporter or a Kamala Harris supporter. And I'm interested to kind of hear from you guys what you think the

positive signs are for both campaigns. I have my own answers to this question. But before I poison the well, I'd be curious to hear from you guys maybe we can start with will and then ari you can pick either campaign or both but i'm just interested you know if you're trying to inject optimism into harris supporters or optimism into trump supporters what would you tell them about what's happening right now and why they might feel enthusiastic yeah to start with the the trump camp i think the comment we just had from William about the energy on his side, I think is absolutely true. I think especially down the stretch in the last two weeks, we've seen a side of Trump that is not just his usual bombastic self, but there's a real confidence and almost a relaxed nature to him at rallies when he's doing stunts like this garbage truck thing yesterday, the McDonald's from a week ago.

I think we're seeing that retail politics skill at its absolute peak for him. And he's already somebody who's good at that. And I think we're also seeing just a real normalization in public of people being very confident to go out and display their support for him in a way that I definitely don't think was the case in 2016 and was less of the case in 2020. So I think there is kind of a surge of energy in his base that is a lot more visible this time around. And I think that does make an impact on the outcome of an election. So I would feel really good about just the confidence that the campaign is projecting. I don't think that they're just making it up or that they're trying to create confidence by

appearing that way. I think it's legitimate. But on the Harris side, I always come back to Democrats are just so organized and they have such good fundamentals in these national campaigns. They're so well-funded. They've run these operations before and they've succeeded with them. So I think we just have to remember that they are going to create a level of support as a baseline that is going to be really strong in the places where they need it because of how well-funded and how well-organized their operations are. So I think that's when I hear people say Trump is headed for a blowout or Trump is going to run the slate in the swing states. I think we're really undervaluing just the level of basic organization that Democrats

have to prevent something like that happening. A lot of similar things to what Will said, especially just to start with Trump, that the side of him that we've seen in the last couple weeks has been almost fun, and if not just downright fun. And that kind of impression that you get as a voter really undercuts the message that Democrats want you to leave with when you enter the voting booth, which is, remember, this is the guy who stood on that stage at the Ellipse where Kamala Harris just delivered her final address on January 6th. And you can interpret that message that he gave to his audience a number of ways. I know people have, but just that he was there, his supporters went to the Capitol and they want you to associate

those two things. You didn't concede the election, certainly not right away. And that is the vision they're trying to sell you is the fire and fury version of Trump. But the version of Trump that we're getting in front of us on camera, in podcasts on stage, is a guy wearing a high-vis garbage man outfit, riding on a branded garbage truck going to McDonald's like it's fun. And he's funny. And when you associate this person who's smiling and trying and saying the words love fest a lot about his rallies, it's hard to get those images to really stick. And he does have the momentum. So if it's Trump's campaign, looking at the way that the race is going, you can say that he's chipping away and it's a matter of time. The only question is, do they have it?

If that's the positive message and that they probably do. The positive message for Democrats is all of the red alarms that we're hearing about Michigan come from position where they are already on top. So Democrats already four weeks ago, a month ago, or even go back to when Harris entered the race, they had a one and a half to two point, sometimes more advantage amongst people who were polled in the state. That had been consistent. If this uncommitted vote pushes things to the point where red alarms are going off and the red alarm is it's a toss-up in Michigan, that's a pretty good worst case scenario. If Democrats win Pennsylvania and it looks like early return voting, which we're going to early voting data,

which we're going to get into hard to interpret, but if it's showing positive signs for Democrats in Pennsylvania, if they do carry that state, they don't even need Michigan if they went North Carolina. And if you're thinking we just need to split in Michigan and North Carolina, it's 50, 50, your odds are 75% chance. Now, if you win Pennsylvania, you're going to win the election. So statistically, keep in mind the perspective is what I would say. So it's just a matter of like you can read these tea leaves a number of ways, but I think that's the best story to see for Democrats. Mine is if you're the Harris campaign, there's a massive gender gap in the early vote. And I think the Trump camp is kind of freaking out about it.

It's a little bit low key. But, you know, Charlie Kirk's got a twin Pete, a pinned tweet, a twin Pete. He's got a pinned tweet on his profile right now. That's like, if men don't show up, you're going to have to listen to Kamala Harris cackle for the next five years or whatever. I mean, the, in Pennsylvania Politico did this big analysis of the early vote and they found that a third of voters who have already voted in this election that did not vote in 2020 were registered Democratic women. That kind of number to me is like the early sign that we could just see a massive bout of enthusiasm from women, especially Democratic women, that would be enough to change the race. So if I'm the Harris campaign, especially Democratic women, that would be enough to

change the race. So if I'm the Harris campaign, I am focused on that. I'm looking at the Trump campaign, freaking out about this a little bit, urging men to go vote on election day. And I'm thinking that's pretty good for us. If I'm the Trump campaign, I think Trump campaign, I think the, the fundamentals of the race are that Harris can't screw up anywhere, basically, like she can afford zero mistakes. She can't lose Michigan. She can't lose Wisconsin. She can't lose Pennsylvania. And all three of those races are incredibly competitive. And you're just hoping that you get one of them or you have like one polling error or whatever it is, or the uncommitted vote in Michigan actually commits to not voting. And then you have like an opening where you just have to win Georgia and North Carolina,

or you just have to win Georgia and Arizona to bring the race home. Again, like looking at these states individually, I think a fairly likely outcome here is that Kamala Harris wins Pennsylvania and loses the election. So, you know, to me, it's not just about one of those blue wall states. But if I'm the Trump campaign, I'm just like, you know, we are within striking distance with all the quote unquote momentum, at least in the media and the press at our back and the support of, you know, somebody like Elon Musk, people like Joe Rogan platforming us, giving us the megaphone to talk to people who aren't typical voters. And I feel pretty good about that. I think it's going to be an incredibly, incredibly tight race. I have no idea what's going to happen. I have my hunches and my inklings, but

at the end of the day, like it's going to come down to the wire. And I think both sides can grasp onto something. If this is a race with a lot of turnout from women and a lot of enthusiasm from women, I think Democrats are going to win. I think Kamala Harris is going to win. If this is a race where young men who don't typically show up to vote actually get turned into voters and are activated by the Trump campaign, typically show up to vote, actually get turned into voters and are activated by the Trump campaign, then I think he'll win and probably do so in fairly dominant fashion with, you know, across the swing states. So that's my read on it. I'm, you know, not updating too much about how I feel tomorrow and our final and our final big election, you know, podcast and newsletter before we get to actual election day, but you'll get those thoughts a little bit more fleshed out tomorrow. Uh, to throw in just, just one more thing that I'm thinking about. This is

something that I saw today. And I think this is truly the definition of you are going to project what you want to happen onto a stat like this. But we have some friends over at Blueprint, which is a Democratic polling firm, but they do some really interesting polling and surveys in the swing states and about messaging for both candidates. Their last poll and survey before the election came out today, and one finding that jumped out to me was 48% of the swing state voters they talked to plan to split their ticket. So I think that's maybe a narrative to keep an eye on. Again, there's no indication of what direction that's going to go. But I think that it makes sense, right? We've seen

some big gaps between the Senate polling and the presidential polling in the swing states. And I think that that's a narrative to keep your eyes on when we come to election day. Yeah, it is really interesting. I mean, there is a world where the polls are just right, and Democrats clean up in the Senate and Harris either wins or loses by a whisker. I mean, that seems totally reasonable to me. I do think we underestimate how many people split ticket vote. In this environment, it's so hard to imagine, but they're out there, I guess. I mean, there's no denying it. It seems unbelievable right now, but yeah. All right. Will, we're going to let you go, man. Thanks for joining us. For those of you tuning in on the stream, uh, a good look at the, the handsome young mug that helps make Tangle happen every day.

Appreciate you being here with us. And, uh, Will's literally in the room directly behind me right now. So, uh, the Tangle team is assembling in Philadelphia. We're glad to be here. Will, we'll, uh, we'll spend some more time with you on election night, man. Thanks. Thanks for having me on you all. All right. So, uh, we have a couple more things left and then we're going to move into some of the questions in the chat. Again, if you have just tuned in, please feel free to leave any

questions or thoughts for the live stream and the podcast. We're going to publish this on Sunday, um, as our, as our Sunday podcast. So if you're in here right now, it's a little bit of a spoiler, but we had to get something tested for, uh, before we went live in a big way on election night, which we're going to do. All right. All right. We've made a habit out of some games. Yeah. Games. See, now people can actually see we get to we like this is what we're doing we're throwing the guns up while we're uh um you've got a couple games i have a little bit of an inkling of what they are they're very vaguely described in our podcast notes uh so i'm interested to see where this goes but oh yeah i guess i'll let you you're the game guess I'll let you. You're the game master. I'll let you drive. For this week, yeah.

So we got a really phenomenal email from a reader in the staff email box this past week named Eric Vander Hayden, who said that he wished that he's always wanted to have an impact on Tangle. He wished he could be that guy who just, like, scours the newsletter and finds the mistake and lets us know about it and helps us get better that way. And then when he, we started doing games, the podcast, he said, this is, this is the way I leave my impact. I have so many good ideas for games. He sent me like five or six and I took a couple and we're going to play two of them today. So the first one that I want to play is called Super Pack or West Wing Episode Title, which is pretty self-descriptive.

I have a list of names, and these names are either of Super Packs or of West Wing Episode Titles. Okay, hold on one second. Before you start, I have to see if I can look at this. A banner for the game. That's helpful. I'm an unbelievable producer. John, you're fired, dude. You're out, bro.

Sorry, man. He's muted. I muted him, too. I do not like the... We need to bring more balance to our... There needs to be some checks and balances on this, on this, this platform.

That'll be another question is if tangles a government, like which branch of government are we, but we'll, we'll get to that. Maybe a different day. The game is super pack or West wing episode title. I'll tell you before, when I got this list,

I found that I actually did pretty well on this. I just missed two. So I have no way of proving that. But it's the gauntlet that I'm throwing down. I want to see if he can get 10 out of 12 or half would be great. Wait, how many are we doing? We're doing 12. Wow.

Okay. It's rapid fire. It's not going to take too long just going to give you the title of what is either a super pack or a west wing episode well how much do you know about west wing did you ever watch the show uh funny enough my dad was obsessed with west wing like most you know blue dog democrats were uh and so it was on the tv all the time. But Phoebe started watching it as like a trashy go to show recently. It was. Yeah, it's very funny. In fact, I remember very vividly, there is an episode where someone got, Phoebe was like in the midst of law school and she was

unbelievably tired. It was like the hardest period of her life in law school. She was super tired and just like strung out and hadn't been sleeping and had all these finals going on. And we watched an episode of West Wing to unwind one night. And it was an episode where a lawyer got appointed to the Supreme Court and Phoebe started weeping when the episode came. It was hilarious. I was like, you're literally crying

about an episode of West Wing. I, you know, I didn't make fun of her at the moment. I comforted her like a good husband, but then I made fun of her a lot later. I mean, I'm with William Fleming here, the reader who said like trashy. I don't know if you can call West Wing a trashy show. It's definitely like idealistic and fantastical. I wouldn't say it's trashy, but it's mindless TV. You don't have to – you can fall in and out of an episode. It's like, oh, his daughter is sick or there's a fight in the Senate. Then you come back at the end and the music is playing and they figured it out and he's still president. It's like that's every episode.

Sorry. I mean it's okay, but it's not trashy. That's fair. Go ahead. All right. Let's every episode. Sorry. I mean, it's okay, but it's not trashy. That's fair. Go ahead. All right, let's do it. So title one, Super PAC or West Wing episode. My America. Wow.

West Wing episode. Super PAC. Shit. All right. This is going to be really hard. It's going to be stressful all right number two american sunrise west wing episode super pack oh you'll get one probably it's all right okay number three dead dead Irish writers.

That has to be, that can't be. All right. It's super bad. West Wing. Of course. God. I saw you telling yourself, like, I'm not going to say it three times in a row, but yeah. I mean, I thought that was obviously a West Wing episode, but then I figured you were trying to fool me. I'm seeing this isn't even my game. This is courtesy of one of our lovely readers and I'm just completely shook. I don't know what's what. Okay. Well,

let's get you on the board here. Next up five votes down West wing episode, West wing episode. There you go. I like on the board. Got it. Okay. You feeling better? Not really, but keep going. We'll push through. Okay. The internet. That's it. The internet, the internet. That's the name of a super pack that's incredible uh west wing episode super pack come on there's this super pack called the internet how amazing is that i love that i have to look this up it is a great name for i mean remember that the west wing came out in the transition to the internet age i could see that being the name of a episode, but that'd be kind of strange. I guess it's strange. It's the title for either. All right, go ahead. Okay. 2,162 votes.

What was the other one was five votes to go. Five votes down was the other one. That's a West Wing episode. That is a West Wing episode. I remember that episode. You do? Vaguely. I just remember like there was the thing. It was like, yeah, I remember that part.

Okay. This, sorry. Next up, In This White House. In This White House. In This White House. West Wing episode. 100%. And this is one of those that I definitely remember where President Bartlett gives one of those speeches and he's talking to the reporter who, or the radio show host who is sitting while he's speaking.

And he says, in this White white house when the president stands everybody does or something like that it was better when sorkin read it moving on it's a great that's a great scene but that's like a that's a classic example of a scene that like my dad watches he's like you're goddamn right and i'm just like all right dad take it easy it's just west wing you know but that really gets him going all right just drink the kool-aid i mean it sounds completely absurd to be a super pack which is why i'm gonna say super bag it is a super pack that's good well done that's one of the ones i missed by the way so well done i like to hear that a promise to our children

west wing episode super pack what do you know what they do i don't i do not that would have been a cool thing to come prepared with huh low-key i super PACs that are named that way probably do creepy stuff. I just like, I don't know. I do trust a super PAC called the internet though. I know that that's just filled with weirdos. That feels like a troll. They probably raise like $5,000 a year or something. All right.

We're really close here. We just have three more. Putting America First. Well, obviously, sounds like a super PAC. Putting America First. Could that be the name of a West Wing? Yeah. Yeah, West Wing episode.

Super PAC. Damn. You're really in your head here. I know you're going to get these last two. You got it. All right. The fall're going to get these last two. You got it. All right. The fall's going to kill you. The West Wing episode.

Good. Yes. Yeah. Okay. And take this Sabbath day. Wow. Is this, is this the beginning of a Jew joke? West Wing episode. West Wing episode.

West Wing episode. That brings you to 50%. So you got six out of 12. What did you say? How many you got? 10. You got 10 out of 12 on that? I did, yeah.

But I can't back that up. It's just the thing that I'm saying here. You're going to put the crawler on, right? Yep. Yeah, I had that teed up. It's just the thing that I'm saying here. And you can put the scroll. You're going to put the crawler on, right? Yep. Yeah, I had that teed up. You like that? A little unoriginal, but it's all right. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.

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. not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. What's the next game? I got to make a new banner.

I'm practicing my production skills. Next game is, can you name the five least accurate states in picking a president? So this is something that I haven't looked into yet. We got when the reader Eric sent this in, he sent a link to what the site is that has the answers. So I know about as much of it as you do. I know that the title that he gave for this game was quote, so goes Ohio. Great. Very good. Because as we know, Ohio is the state that predicts election winners or is thought to the most anyway. I don't even know if that's true. So the question is kind of the opposite. What are the five states that are least accurate at picking the president? And I don't know. I think I have a pretty good few guesses. One of the questions I have, so do you have the answers ready?

They are in a separate tab that I've not opened yet. Yeah. Do we, can you look at the answers and tell me what the timeframe is? That feels really important. I hope so. Let me see if I can do that without ruining the answers. Is this for both of us? I want to see if I can play too. Okay, I do. I can. I can. So I have it right now. I have a list of answers. It's sorted from most accurate to least accurate. So I only

see the top six or seven most accurate. It is of all times. It's going back to 1798. The most accurate state at predicting the president is New Mexico. Interesting. Okay. Even if it's going back to seven, God, that's really tough. All right. I have some guesses. That timeframe makes it way, way harder. But I will say my number one guess is Alabama. Um, I think that's probably the least accurate at predicting one of the least accurate. Uh, you want to go every other here or you want to try and do your own list? I think my list is going to be kind of dumb. I have one thought, and I'm just spamming it, which is I know that around the Civil War, just after the Civil War, that the parties sort of switched in terms of the way that their platforms were built. and that that switch from Republican to Democrat, Democrat to Republican, somewhat revolved around the way we think about, think of the South. And if I think that a lot of, I'm just, I'm just thinking that the South probably is going to have a lot of states that because of the reverse and polarity missed out on the correct presidential winner.

I don't even know if that's good logic, but that means that my answers are just going to be Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia. That's it. Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia. Yep. All right. I'm California, Alabama, Hawaii, New York, and like New Jersey. New Jersey. Okay. So you have Alabama, California, Hawaii, New Jersey.

What was the other one? New York. New Jersey. What was the other one? New York. New York. So you have one by current standards, deep red state, and then four deep blue states. Yeah, correct. What's the thought process there? Really, California and New York seem like as close to slam dunks as I can think. I mean, there, I don't, as far as I know, well, I mean, obviously like when we get to the 1800s,

the whole realignment, it gets messy, but I just think like we've had more elections. Oh man, I don't know. It's really hard's really hard now that i'm thinking it through i'm not really sure i'm so biased towards the last hundred years right but like the states hawaii hawaii is a new state and has always been blue as far as i know that's honestly maybe the one i feel most confident about um okay least accurate states yeah all right you're ready to let it rip i'm ready to let it rip all that i can all i can see though is that i'm looking at the chat i don't see anybody offering their own answer so suspiciously quiet oh there's one somebody's saying mississippi which is one of the one that i see. Yeah, Wes. We'll see.

We'll see what happens. Okay. I got the list. I'm scrolling. And the least accurate is Washington, D.C., which I guess is a state. Total hoax. Not a state. Not even close to a state.

It's pretty close. It's a voting district. This game's been completely corrupted. No, we don't recognize Washington State. All right, keep going. Washington, D.C. Why? No, we don't recognize Washington, D.C. as a state. Okay, then I'll just give you the next five.

All right. Sounds pretty good, these first three. Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and then Texas, South Dakota. Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, South Dakota. Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, South Dakota. Wow. South Dakota is good because South Dakota is also like new-ish. Wow. That is interesting.

South Dakota, much worse at predicting the president than North Dakota by a lot. I should have thought of more states like that that were founded more recently like south dakota has only been around since the late 1800s which helps it all right where where are new york and california new jersey on this list and hawaii hawaii's got to be top 10 there's no way hawaii is six seven eight nine if you don't count dc it's nine i don't then yeah i think uh i'm not looking amazing for you i'm scrolling a lot new jersey's in the top half um can you change the date range on this this is going back to the 1700s i don't think that I can. I can just read the list. You know,

we take the good with the bad. New York is the sixth most accurate state at picking the president. And Illinois, sorry, and California is the third most accurate state. Okay. That's a tough one to wear, bud. Yeah, that's

tough. All right, cool. Okay. That's like the most like momentum robbing, um, heard from you. All right. We're going to move into some, uh, some, some audience questions to wrap up, uh, the podcast today after I just got obliterated in that game by Ari. We had a few, I'm going to scroll up. We had a few that popped up that I really liked. The chat is currently getting absolutely dominated by pit ultimate players, which I very much enjoy.

Love that, H2P. What candy or other item do you give out, William fleming ass i need to um i'll go first uh twix because you give out the best candy to kids or else you're a chump so twix is the best uh reese's pieces the little ones or you know the two pack with the big cups both work Kit Kats that's what we're loaded with for tonight because when I was a kid I remember you get a Twix or like a Kit Kat and it was lit um is how I you know I guess now as I said that maybe like nerd ropes or something would have been pretty cool, but those are the, those are the go-to candies that I'm going to be dishing.

And for me, I was brought up in a household where Halloween was like, there there's a time to save and a time to spend and Halloween was a time to spend. So my dad, his belief was you give out the king size bars on Halloween, go to Costco. He would get a box of Snickers, like a king size, a box of king size, three musketeers for the people who don't have good taste. And then a box of king size Twix. And when we've given out candy, that's what we've done. Um, but recently, I think the last couple of years in Pittsburgh, when we were just sort of decimated a little bit by the pandemic, we didn't have as

many trick-or-treaters. I didn't put as much effort in and we just went with like the grab bag, KitKat, Reese's, Twix, fun size bars. I didn't feel good about that. That wasn't in line with my values. That was a regression for for me i apologized to the children in that neighborhood you deserved more you didn't get it i promise to be better in the future but those are the best candies to get at halloween nerds rope's great but i'm a chocolate candy bar household for sure dude check this out you can just blast will on stage just stuffing his face on the live screen. That's heinous. What's up, everybody? This office has great snack. This office has great snack. Smooth as silk.

It's ready to go. It's still getting handy. Kit Kats, Reese's, Whistlers. I'll take anything, but... No hesitation. That's a confident guy right there. Unbelievable drip from Will. Good, nice.

Put him back. All right, cool. Next question from Will. Good, nice. Put him back. All right, cool. Next question from Wes. I've been hearing more than a couple of people saying that they think Trump has a popular vote locked up. That anecdotally sounds like a bubble to me. Electoral college is a toss up, a popular vote, question mark. Yeah, I've been hearing this, too.

I have some degenerate friends who gamble a ton and they're all texting me because on the poly market and all these gambling markets right now, you can bet close to even odds on Kamala Harris winning the popular vote. I think it's personally insane. I think she is definitely going to win the popular vote. I understand that Trump's campaigning in New York and he's even gone to California and he's trying to dig in. I just like the national polling numbers seem pretty right. Like we, the polling certain battlegrounds is difficult, but like in 2020 and 2016 on

the popular vote, the, the national polls were pretty close to accurate. I mean, Clinton won the popular vote by a few million. Harris or Biden, excuse me, won the popular vote by a few million. I have not seen anything that makes me think that Donald Trump is going to win the popular vote. Gamble responsibly. But you know, that has been the thing that I've told people. Right. I don't have a ton to add to that. I think Donald Trump's probably not going to win the popular vote. It's possible, but he like Republicans haven't been outperforming their 2016 performance since Trump was elected in office and he didn't win the popular vote then. So it just, just basic reasoning, it's not likely. And if the electoral

college is a toss up, it's probably not going to be the case that the popular vote isn't going to be something Democrats win just where the numbers go. Um, we do have, I talking to a person who is involved with betting markets for political races and such, and I'm interested in trying to get him to write a reader submitted essay for after the election, just to talk about things that they learned and observed and data from this election. I don't know if that's gonna, if if that's going to happen, but I think we could probably get some good insights. And if you're interested in something like that, um, just shoot me, shoot me a message, I guess, the people on the stream, and I'll try to add some pressure to get that done. Really quick before we switch to our next question, got a shout out Wesley, who sent me a bottle of bourbon as a gift.

Phenomenal bottle of bourbon that I will be drinking with Ari and John in 24 hours tomorrow night. It was excellent. Thank you, Wes. New thing, if you feel compelled to send me bottles of bourbon, I'm all ears. Just shoot me an email. That was a first for me, but I was very appreciative and pumped about it. So thank you, Wes, for doing that. Here's a familiar face, Andrew Maganelli. Get him out of the chat. No, come on. Of MKBHD fame, Andrew is a good friend of ours and a producer on Marques Brownlee's YouTube channel, which is way, way, way more well known than ours.

Why is the Sunday podcast on Thursday? Yeah, hot take, hot take, hot off the press. We produce this show before Sunday, so it's a little bit of a misnomer. It drops every Sunday, but we record on Thursdays and we do this because we love John and we don't want to make John work on Saturday nights or Sunday mornings having to record hours of an episode. So, uh, he does kind of end up working on the weekends anyway, my bad, John. But, um, yeah, we always, we always record. What's that? We always record on Thursdays.

And yeah, and the podcast drops on Sunday. So thanks for the question. It was, you know, dripping with, I don't know what the word is. Irony, I guess, is the nice way to say it. Troll energy. I mean, I love you, freshman. Irony, I guess, is the nice way to say it. Troll energy. I mean, I love you, freshman. It's a good question, though. Dr. Crypto.

Oh, man. I know who Dr. Crypto is, but since he's anonymous online, I'm not going to blow a spot. He's a family member of mine, actually. Not my immediate family, but he's a family member of mine whom I love dearly. And I imagine is watching this from his office in Seattle right now, just rage texting me on the side about Donald Trump because I love him and that's what he does. I think Elon is guilty of a lot of the things. The question is, how is Elon not guilty of everything the right accuses George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg of? I think he is guilty of a lot of the things that he accuses them,

that the right accuses them of. Hot take, maybe not even a hot take, medium rare take. He is like doing the opposite of what he said he was going to do. I was a cheerleader of Elon Musk's acquisition of X. I was pumped about the idea of him being on the board of Twitter, of then Twitter. And when we found out he was going to buy it, I felt much more mixed about it because just the idea of one of the wealthiest people in the world owning this massive information platform made me nervous for exactly the reasons that we're seeing now, which is that he's decided to throw his hat in the ring politically. And he's clearly thumbing the scales in one direction. And I find it pretty disturbing and frustrating. So, you know, there's one way to look at what's happening on the platform

now, which is like, we are actually just seeing an unfiltered version of America. I actually don't think that's true. I think what we're seeing on the platform is an algorithm that's clearly thumbing the scales for pro-Trump content. And also for like, I hate the term conspiracy theories, but I am being confronted with more absurd theories and ideas about elections being stolen and hurricanes being controlled by the government and, you know, aliens and all this stuff. Like, you know, you guys know, I kind of believe the alien stuff, but like, generally speaking, the information ecosystem seems way worse on X now than it did before. I don't know if you have anything to add to that, Ari, but I think he is guilty of those things. So that's how I feel.

I'd like the counterpoint, I suppose, is that sort of like when Fox News started ramping up their conservative programming in the W. Bush years, that the mantra fair and balanced kind of applies here of not that Elon Musk is fair and centrist and making the scales even, but that he sees himself as tipping them back towards balance because a lot of, we talk about the Democrats having a superior ground game all the time. That's because they out-raise Republicans and they have been for a little bit now. And the liberal media, quote, unquote, is a term because it more or less is real. We know that a lot of the people who work for center and center-left organizations tend very strongly towards the left and their personal views, and that Elon Musk contributing much of his great fortune and effort and ability towards trying to help Republican causes right now

is sort of that Fox News fair and balanced version of campaign donations. I think campaign donations, like most people think, are out of control, high, crazy. And the best way to solve it isn't by fighting more money with more money, but that if you want to try to come up with the argument for why it's actually all right, it's not that Elon isn't doing what Soros is, it's that he is and that he should be. Next question from Lindsay. Hey, Lindsay, good to see you. I think you had to sign off early because you said something in the chat. The question is, I know that I spoke with Andrew Yang in 2021, but why have we not heard more about or from the Forward Party and Tangle News during this election year? I actually invited Andrew to come on for the YouTube live stream on election night and do

some real-time commentary. I have not heard back from him. I follow him, and we've exchanged some messages here and there over the last few years. I do not think the forward party stuff is going particularly well, in part because it's really difficult to start a third party that has weight to throw around. I was actually kind of optimistic about what they were doing because I thought they had a good strategy, which was, let's get people in the Senate and the House because it'll be easier to get them elected. And then we can, you know, fight the fight of presidential elections somewhere down the road. They wanted to build like a caucus in Congress, which I think if you're trying to start a third party, that is the way to do it, is to bring people up through the

political ranks and get a few seats in Congress and then start a coalition and do some building around that. It's a long-term project. It's very possible that we hear about them in 10, 15, 20 years and they've made some kind of inroads. But yeah, I have not heard much from them. I think a big thing is that Andrew did not expect Trump to run again in 2024. I think a lot of people didn't expect him to. And I think he thought there was going to be this opening for a third party. But he is, you know, in the blue red scheme of things, he's a Democrat.

And I think he did not want to be associated with a movement that maybe helped Trump get reelected. And that's probably why we haven't heard or seen much out of him since then. Really quick, I'll put this up for John. Look at this really nice comment from Wes. See, John, the people love you, man. They don't want you to go. This was, I think, when I made a joke about firing John, because I was just on fire with the production year. And for the audio listeners, it's a comment from Wesley saying that John should never leave

because it would permanently hurt our audio production quality, which is true. All right. I'm seeing a lot of spam chats from all the pit bros, you know, a bunch of dorks I'm going to have to ignore. That's all right. Uh, let's, uh, no, let's get, Tristan's got to get, all right. You dressing up as Joe Rogan this year.

I don't know if I'm, I don't know if I'm strong enough to dress up as Joe Rogan. To be honest, I can try to do the, uh, like the posture. I mean, I have the hairline for it, but I can tuck my arms in and lean forward. And maybe this will count as me, uh, me doing my Joe Rogan for this year. But yeah, we have practice tonight, so I'm not going to go in costume for that this year. I love that. I'm packing up to leave tomorrow to go to Philly. So got to try to get home, get everything in a bag, get some sleep, and then be the door. But that Les Grossman costume, I did feel very good about a couple of years ago.

That is a good costume. All right, cool. Speaking of Ari having things to do tonight and everybody being in transit, we're going to start to wrap things up. My favorite part of the show, we get to enter the grievance zone for a little bit. Ari, do you want to go first or second? I can't tell. I have so much to complain about. Let me go first. You have to choose one.

We can't listen to you complain. I know. I'm going to choose one. Do you want to choose one? I gave you some blurbs. Are you more interested in one of them? I could complain about any of them. I'd like to hear about issues

at the Canadian border. I'm into that. Great. Let's talk about Canada. Let's talk about me trying to go to a hockey game a couple of weeks ago. I'm from Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Penguins fan. I've never been to a game in Montreal. I've been told that by many people that it is the best place to watch a hockey game as

an unmatched environment for fans that the stadium seats are really steep. So you're right on top of the action the whole time. And they really appreciate the game. They really appreciate people who come in from other teams and like the sport. So my wife and I were going to put on a couple of hockey jerseys for some famous French Canadian Pittsburgh Penguins, Mario Lemieux and Crystal Tang and go up to Montreal. So we leave plenty early game is at seven 30 puck drops at seven 30. We know that it takes about 80 to 90 minutes to get to Montreal from Burlington, Vermont, where we live. And we're going to go take a train in from just outside the town, which should be

about 80 minutes away, another 30 with traffic, 30 minute train ride, 30 minutes to get to the stadium. So that would have us leaving around five. We leave at 445 just to be safe. As we are going up to the border, Google Maps tells us that the wait at the border crossing is an hour and a half. So that's untenable. So we decide something that a lot of people probably ended up doing too, which was we're going to go through the smaller one that is just a little bit down the road and try to get through that way. And we are sitting in a parked line of traffic with our hockey jerseys on like idiots trying to get to the border, not moving for about a half hour. And we've gone three or four car lengths, nothing's happening. So we decide to try to take a U-turn to go to

the other border crossing. While we're doing this, my wife discovers that the reason why the border crossing is so slow is that this is Canadian Thanksgiving. That Canada has their own Thanksgiving. It's in October. Wow, hoax. Hoax alert. And it does. We are getting crunched because, one, it means that there are fewer people staffing the border. And two, it means it's a travel day for all the Canadians that came into the U.S., especially to Vermont, to look at the beautiful foliage, which I don't want to complain about people coming in to look at foliage.

I don't want to be that guy, but I'll be that guy for today just a little bit. And they're going back up to the border at the same time we are. So the lines are massively long, so long that we left at like before five o'clock, we're driving to the border. Everything's going fine. It is 645. Like we've just been waiting for so long in different lines and we have to make the decision we're going to turn around because of the Canadian Thanksgiving commuter traffic. We try to do a U-turn from the border crossing line,

which is like impossible. So we accidentally pull in through a, like a turnoff lane that looks like a turnoff lane for people that are trying to do exactly the thing that we're doing, but a gate is closed. So we can't pass through. So we try to back up four armed police officers as soon as we try to back up come screaming out of the border crossing station and they're like what are you doing why are you in reverse like we're just we don't want to go through the border now we see how packed it was we just want to go back to the u.s they're like you do not ever reverse on this lane ever sorry and then they open the gate for us so we're like we kind of got what we wanted though so i don't really feel bad did get scolded by a bunch of cops and then the other border crossing person as we tried to go from the u.s back into the u.s asked us where we came from and we had

to sheetlessly say like yeah just like 50 yards over there we didn't get into canada today and he's like oh yeah canadian thanksgiving right we're like yep better luck next time we're like thanks man this was a fun three and a half hour evening that we got to spend in the car just driving to the canadian border and back extremely frustrating the penguins won that game that would have been a nice one to go to so maybe next time i do we know i'm looking this up right now, what Canada Thanksgiving is actually, Thanksgiving corresponds to the British and continental European harvest festival with churches decorated with cornucopias, pumpkins, corn, wheat, cheese, and other harvest bounties.

It's the same thing. Just do it on the- It doesn't sound like the same thing. It sounds, how is the, how does it not sound like the same thing. How does it not sound like the same thing? I guess it corresponds, but I mean, that seems too close to like an ode to the monarch for me. Everything they do is just a little bit more of an ode to the monarch. So it's their cultural tradition, I guess. It's Thanksgiving, but also the king was there. That's what I think. Oh, the king. All right. Hey right hey john lull what's up man now i got the mic unmuted sorry i was trying to unmute you while you're amusing yourself

all right john's gonna be ripping our production uh do you have anything you want to say yeah i've seen you shaking your head you're giving me the middle finger you're let me tell you something i should have played that west wing game uh right from. The fact that you got so many wrong is so disappointing. I mean, I tried my way. What do you think you would have done much better? Did you know everyone? I knew, I think I, I think I got one or two wrong, but yeah, I knew a bunch for sure. Wow. Thanks for correcting the quote too. Greg, Greg wants to know what my grievance is. Let me tell you something about working for Isaac. Yes, I'm going to mute myself.

John, go. It's fine. It's fine. It's all good. It's always great. And I love working on weekends. I mean, who doesn't? Hey, we all work hard around here.

I will say, yeah, we all work hard. We all put in a lot of time. It's really great. Love being a part of this team. But while I'm here real quick, I'm going to test something because that was the point of this. I want to test a couple of things to get ready for election night, which if you guys don't know or didn't get the message yet, we're going to be going live on election night. These handsome mugs, including this one right here are going to be uh presenting what it do they're going to be talking with a bunch of guests we've got a really good guest lineup and

i'm super uh impressed shout out to will k back the man and communications lead editor the six i call him the best sixth man the dude can do literally everything all of our jobs you said the other day actually you said this at our team retreat we're just like i think will was in the back of a pickup truck a little bit inebriated and you were like we're all gonna be working for that guy one day i was like yeah we are you're gonna keep that secrets yeah i want to see if this thing works real quick. Let's try this. The airing of grievances.

Wow, that's really nice. I'm here. That would have been nice to have before mine, John. That's a lovely dress you have on. May I have the stats? That's good to know. All right. I will do one other thing and take us out of here

oh that's good like that that's pretty slick right yeah i like that a lot before isaac gets to give his awesome we're done um all right sweet we're cooking i have to give my grievance oh whoops don't outro music me this is like uh being a comedy show checks and balances this is i'm getting control of this thing all right john's out of here will's out of here all right i'm back um you know what ari's out of here see that i could do that whenever i want all right everybody uh everybody. All right. My here's my crew. This is not as all right. That was a great grievance. One of your all time best, I have to say. Canada, Canadian Thanksgiving, running with armed police. It had everything.

Mine is much less interesting. Phoebe and I are in a new apartment, you know, longstanding thread of grievances that got us there. It's incredible weather outside right now. Like, you know, it should not be this warm or dry through October, but just like put aside that maybe mother nature is deeply ill for a moment. It's like quite nice to just be 70 degrees and sunny all day and then like 50 and cool at night. The ultimate sleeping weather. So I've just been windows open every night to sleep because it's just so the air is crisp. It's cool. It's just like beautiful, perfect sleeping temperature. And all day on my street in this new apartment, it's quiet. It's just like, like I live three blocks South of where I am now. And it was so much noisier and now it's so quiet all day,

but the moment like 10 o'clock hits when I'm climbing into bed, it just turns into complete ruckus. Like, and like weird kind of, there's a main street near us and they're just drag racing all the time. These cars are just ripping, just drag racing. So at 2 AM every night, I'm in my nice little cozy sleep, enjoying the cool fall. And I just wake up to these cars racing two blocks away, just rip. It sounds like they're just doing donuts, like dirt bikes, cars, quads, ATVs, like the Philly four-wheeler cruise, just ripping around. Then in the middle of the night, I would say 80% of the nights that we've had our trash out since I've gotten there, trash recycling out, I've woken up to somebody just rooting

around in our trash, which is, and recycling out, I've woken up to somebody just rooting around in our trash, which is and recycling, which is like right outside. And it's just like, you know, some rando street people, whatever, but they come down our block, and they just go through everybody's recycling. And so it's like very quietly, it just gets louder and louder and louder until they get directly to our house underneath our window and then go through our stuff. And then it gets quieter and quieter. And so it's like this 20 minute, just sitting there, hearing it coming, not being able to fall back asleep. Then it gets really loud. It's right there. And then this thing that I just discovered is that there's this very fun looking gym directly across the street from us. It's like,

you know, it looks like a squat. They're all doing heavyweight type gym, like bar exercises, whatever. Rack exercises. But a lot, there's some morning workout that they do that starts at like 4.30, 5 a.m. Oh, no. Where the first thing they do is they all start running warm-up laps. So it's just like this, like, like them, just like these feet pattering, marching around the block. And it's the same thing as they're cycling. They come, they disappear. They do a lap around the bike,

come back and they do like 10 laps every morning. So, um, my grievance is that I'm living through the best sleeping weather of all time and I can't do anything about it because I'm, uh, yeah, I'm just, I'm stuck in this bizarro world where things get weird after dark where I am. Um, last thing I just want to say, once again, we're going to be streaming live Tuesday night on election night as results start coming in. So subscribe to the channel, set up notifications, make sure you're notified. And yeah, we'll see you guys there. Before we leave the stream, you're going to see me do the thing that I do at the end of every podcast, which is that I do the introduction for the podcast at the very end. I'm going to do it right here, live on the stream. And then John's going to play our sweet music. And then I'm going to do it right here, live on the stream. And then John's going to play our

sweet music. And then I'm going to end the stream. All right, John, nod your head. So I know you know what's going on. Thumbs up from John. Will's nodding his head, even though he's not involved or has anything to do with any of this. He has to be on his toes, apparently. Thank you guys for tuning in. Appreciate you being here. Yes, it's fun. And we'll see you on election night. Take care. Peace.

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Law. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kedak, 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 Diet 75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website.