Suspension of the rules. - The Maine anniversary episode. Isaac, Ari and Kmele reflect on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and Tangle's 7 year anniversary.

0:00Coming up, we're in Maine for a team retreat and we're doing an anniversary episode. First, we talk 9-11, the 25th anniversary, a bit of a somber reflection on what happened and where things are. And then we drink a little bit and we cheer up for the 7-year anniversary of Tangle. It is a very good and nostalgic episode. You guys are going to like it. Gentlemen, the main episode for Maine event. I guess we'll call it, uh, welcome to Suspension of the Rules. I'm Isaac Sawyer host. Wow, I almost committed an incredible party foul to start the show. Yeah, we're in Maine together in the same room, which is timely. We have two, I would say, uh, anniversaries today that we're going to kind of key in on for today's episode.

1:07One somber and one happy. So I think, uh, probably most appropriate to start with the somber one, the one that's going to be on everybody's mind this week, which is the September 11th, 9-11, 25th anniversary, which is kind of hard to fathom or imagine. I have thought a lot about the ways to talk about this, you know, in Tangle on the show, we have a mailbag that's coming out in the newsletter today and also will do a podcast version of our newsletter on Friday and a podcast version of that too. We got a lot of reader questions about September 11th, including a lot from audience members who were not alive when 9-11, we're not calling it a 25s a long time ago. Sure. Yeah. I mean, 25 years ago, um, I mean, I was only in fifth grade. I'm the youngest one here. So, uh, you guys have more vivid memories of it than I do. I'm sure end of the aftermath. But it's still like, it is like the formative political moment in my life. I mean, now,

2:08I guess, COVID's in there as well. But certainly, I think that shaped all the politics that I've experienced and lived through since I was politically conscious. And one of the questions that really astounded me, which we are having my father answer in the podcast and the newsletter coming out on Friday was from somebody in, I think from California and it was a younger reader who wrote in and said, I grew up on the West Coast and I was not alive when 9-11 happened. And so for me, this day is basically just like a meme. Like, it's like an internet joke. That means nothing to me. And I was curious if you guys could sort of contextualize what the day was like and what it was actually like living through September 11th, which I thought was, first of all, such a fantastically earnest question from like a young, like just being like, I know that I should care more about this or this day should feel more impactful to me, but like it's literally just a joke to me.

3:10And be like, I'm interested in opening my mind and like learning a little bit about that. So I thought maybe that would be an interesting way to start this episode in this show is if the three of us could talk a little bit about our personal experiences. And I'm most interested in what you guys have to say. So maybe we'll start with you. Camille, you're the elder statesman here. Unfortunately, you'd like to get that as you go. Yeah, I mean, what do you remember about the day and what was it like living through it? I think those are interesting places to start. Yeah. As you're talking about it, it occurs to me that this is the perhaps the only national milestone that has occurred over the course of my lifetime that I routinely think back on, I reflect on and routinely wonder about other people's reflection of it, especially younger people who don't have kind of an immediate recollection of it or were too young to really know anything about it. It casts this extraordinarily

4:12long shadow on US politics. Certainly, I was in undergraduate. I remember being a beautiful fall day and not really being certain what to do at that point. I'm not sure if I ever got the notification that classes were canceled at University of Maryland, but this was this weird period where I was still living at home with my parents was commuting to school and was about to move out. And I remember just driving the campus because I wanted to be with other people. And at the time, I was actually teaching a Bible study on campus and remember going and maybe 40, 50 people showed up in a room and we just kind of got together and commiserated. I don't remember the conversations so much as the rather obvious, I think, motivation in getting together to just offer one another comfort and a sense of stability. Other things have happened in the years since that have been pretty profound,

5:13obviously. But in many instances, it's not just a day. Certainly, if we were to talk about the most consequential things that have happened in the past decades, we would talk about COVID. That's not a day. We would talk about perhaps January 6th. That's a day, but there seemed to be, there's something about that that I think is fundamentally different. There's a lot of meeting up to it. And yeah, there was something else that just that violence is not unifying. Yeah, but there's something about this kind of disruptive outside force, something occurring that seems truly beyond imagining and that just continues to occur. It's not the one plane strike which seems like maybe it's an accident. And I think actually, that's now that we're talking about the first plane strike happens. I'm awoken or perhaps I was already awake, but I find out about it. We turn on the television in my house. Sure, my dad turned it on actually. And then the second

6:13plane strikes the building. And at that point, it became clear that there was something profound taking place and something had been upended. And over the course of the weeks and months to follow, in really years to follow, I think we've discovered just how much has been upended. The global world order and some respects have been changed in a fundamental way. Certainly, much of the kind of foreign policy that is taken shape afterwards downstream of that event, I think that we really couldn't have imagined. You know, you have the fall of the Iron Curtain, the disappearance of the Soviet Union, and you have this expectation about the kind of end of history in a way that 9-11 just made completely impossible to sort of sustain any belief in. That's something that I think we a lot of us don't appreciate. I can barely remember that too. The feeling of it's the end of history of in my textbooks as a kid, they didn't have the fall of the Berlin Wall quite yet. I remember in first or second grade, we got new textbooks. Like

7:18there's no such thing as East Germany anymore. Yeah. And feeling like, okay, while we're doing countries are together, there's no reason for anybody to attack anybody we're good. And the thing that I remember about 9-11, I was 15, I was a freshman in high school, I was in keyboarding class, like typing. And it came on like the school monitor system that there was an attack on the World Trade Center, which night grade. So 60 to 70% of people didn't know what that was, probably 90% or more honestly. And it felt confusing and strange and surreal. And then the next class after that was French. And I had a French teacher who was from France. And he was very stereotypical about it. So I got to know what's going on. I have to get out of here. So your country's crazy. And that sort of sustained. But the feeling of that time, I think was who was doing this to us. And I remember people saying, Afghan, a stand attack to us, which was the first kind of broad misunderstanding that would get corrected. And even then, the thing we're talking

8:22about it as something that informed the way that we awoke to the world politically. And in my bones, I think my strongest bias is I'm a non-conformist. I'm just anti-whatever the consensus is. I kind of want to prod it a little bit and see if there's a weakness or be against it. And I remember that night, this is maybe the thing that formed it or maybe it's the thing that's down-stream of it. I remember watching the footage, the live footage with the night vision treatment and everything of us showing something in Afghanistan, some missiles flying. I remember like my mom's reaction, like my very peaceful, happy mom, which was like, good, good, get them. And I remember just as a 14-year-old thinking, this doesn't feel super right. I don't know. It seemed like even then, there was an animus that was affecting the way that we're reacting that I didn't really

9:22feel comfortable with. We didn't really even know what happened yet, but we're cheering strikes that we didn't know we were hitting. And that was an attitude that I feel like last the decades. The famous statistic is that I think George Bush had like a 92% approval or something like that. When he threw out the first pitch of the Yankees game, it was like 9 out of 10 Americans supported him as proud. I mean, that is the thing that I don't think anybody who wasn't alive for it can really conceptualize. Imagine what a profound event would have to happen today for Donald Trump to enjoy a 90% approval rating. For the thing that everyone says is, look, you could disagree or agree with his policies, but he's the president and we have to be in line as a country right now. We're back. He's our guy. That's actually such a good point. I mean, I'm remembering now as we talk about it, the contempt that so many people had for a George W. Bush. He was for a boy. I actually, I remember I was an SAT tutor in the next couple years,

10:29and our book that we taught to kids was making jokes about how George W. Bush was dumb. It was like the meme that was the comedy that was given to kids so they can learn SAT vocab better, was find the grammar errors in these George W. Bush sentences and was sort of a joke that the president was a dummy, but I feel like we came back to that eventually, but for that year. So yeah, there was not an inflang of it. Then the rock war, the war I tear happened, and then it was stand in a rock came kind of hated for that and you know, and the Dick Cheney element of it all. Yeah, I was in fifth grade, like I mentioned, I was in Mr. Mounds class, again, like the formative political experience of my life. And definitely one of the first most vivid memories I have was a teacher walking in and whispering something in Mr. Mounds here, and his just like jaw gap and being like, what? And then everybody in the class is like, oh my god,

11:30what's going on? And him just saying candidly that a plane had flown into a building in New York, we I lived in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, we're on the New Jersey Transit train line. So a lot of family and friends and kids in school, like their parents worked in New York City. So it was a really big deal for us. Like in my hometown, there's a 9-11 memorial of all the parents and like people of the commuters who died in the Twin Towers that day. And so like everybody in my town knew somebody who was kind of impacted. And so he said like some of you guys might get called out of school, and then something happened where like a you know, whatever, it's fifth grade. So my memory is a little fuzzy about it. But I just remember there was a class that maybe turned on a radio or a teacher turned on the radio. And then they heard when the second plane hit and realized like, oh, this isn't a tack and wasn't an accident. And quickly like wildfire in elementary school, this rumor spread that we were being attacked by China. They were like canceling recess and sending

12:34us home early. And I remember I was a walker. I walked to school and I remember running home from school and like being scared of like being outside and thinking like in my head, having heard that China's attacking us and like we weren't going to have recess because it was too dangerous to go outside and nobody knew what was going on and like bursting into the back door in my house. And then coming into my family room, my parents are there with my neighbor and they're all just like watching the TV crying. And I'd like that. I just so vividly remember is like coming into the family room. And like serious adult crying like everybody's really scared doesn't know what's going on. Something that's interesting to me just thinking about this is your family and where you grew up sort of in the commuter region of New York City. Yeah. Camillo, you were in the DC area generally. Now it's in Pittsburgh, which is kind of close to the Shanksville or Flight 93 went down. And we all probably were in regions that were having

13:36reactions to the events that were local to us. And I think I remember in Pittsburgh people were reacting to Flight 93 last, the third thing where they're like we have to get out of school. So we don't know what's going to happen. We're going to get hit. And again, like non-conformist dick 14-year-old R.I. was like plum were fine. I don't calm down. But like there is a stereo that was spreading. Yeah. And just the idea of a plane you don't know where it's going to go next. And it's before people are really exchanging news on the internet. Yeah. And that was something that just pervaded that day was the uncertainty of what could happen. I think like the thing that I would when I think about what changed most or the sort of before and after. And we were actually just talking about this. We didn't even say we're in Maine on a team retreat right now. Hence the main, you know, we called it the main episode. We never gave contact. Yeah. We're in Maine. Yeah, we're in Maine. The Tangle teams all here in Maine on a team retreat. And we're staying in this beautiful awesome cabin camp that we'll came back as senior editor organized. And you know, we

14:42all went out on a boat today. And we were like, you know, just like exploring a little bit of the main coastline and on the drive home, we kind of fell into this conversation in my car at least about the September 11th anniversary. And we had a bunch of people in the car who were like older millennials like 30s, 40s. So they have like real vivid memories of kind of before and after. And one of the things that we got to that I feel like is such an essential part of it is there was just this time when like there was so much less fear about existing in public. Like there was no airport security. And that is something that like a 22 year old just could never conceptualize now. But like I remember flying to Florida to visit my grandmother with my parents. And I remember getting off the plane and she standing there waiting at the terminal because she just walked in the airport because anybody's coming on an airport right without a ticket. And there's no security. And it's like something like that that's so basic. It was just the idea that like an

15:48airport was dangerous was like a totally foreign concept to be paranoid. And and now there's all these things that have been layered on top of it like the you know mass shootings and like a different kinds of terrorist attacks and you know stranger danger. The idea of abductions taken films with I even stranger danger. I feel like existed in like the 70s and 80s and 90s you know. But like this is we live in an era now superdark. The post 9-11 world that is like you have to know where the emergency exits are and you know the building might get bombed and what do we do we're sharing our locations with our family and friends at all times so you can just check in where somebody is right. I go to a movie theater now and you have to go through a metal detector. It's insane like that that is like that never and I think all of that stuff is downstream of 9-11. So if you ask me like before and after what changed that to me is like the core psychology of the country that like we're vulnerable. It could happen at any time and there are people out there who

16:53hate us. Whether it was like blissful ignorance on our part as a nation pre 2001 or not is sort of beside the point for the purpose of what I'm saying. But like it was never here it was never on the homeland and like the 90s were pretty good. It was like great economy, stable presidency, the surpluses. Yeah we survived the turn of the millennium like I you know 9-11 was one of my first core memories probably the real first one politically or like the like the world could be scary memory that I had was watching the ball drop on December 31st 1999 and thinking that like all the computers were going to crash and the power and everything was like yeah the power is going to go out and like and I remember just saying they're like oh my god and then it changed and like everybody's like we're fine you know like and and like but like it's over yeah like that was like the kind of scary stuff we had that then and now it's so different and yeah I don't know

17:55that to me even though I was like really young I was old enough to really understand and experience that shift and I still like you know if I close my eyes I can like remember the pre 9-11 world and what it was like to just be in public and be out and and it's really different now and like a I think objectively worse terrible way I mean it's less comforting in my opinion I don't feel safer when I go to the airport because of all the security or whatever yeah I mean preaching of the choir and I'm a kid learning that but yeah cameos been so patient everywhere well no I'm intensive I'm sure well I'm I am thinking about all of these things and in some respects I'm thinking about them in ways that I just have not for years um some of it not at all I think the connection that you're making Isaac between the sense of insecurity that we have and the direct contrast here is in many respects we've never been safer like as a populace like we are healthier in general we've got a battery of miracle drugs that are that seem able to arrest most of the things

18:58that we could be stricken with at least treatments for for a lot of the rest violence is down across the board and at the same time we have never been more thoroughly insulated from these potential risks in every area of our lives and there's something about that security security theater that in many respects and it's interesting even that I'll come back to that in a moment that is absolutely having some sort of impact on our psyches I wonder if it has an impact on the way that I go about raising my children the the level of concern that I have in most any circumstance that they may fall and break something or that someone might do something to them um certainly like my wife and I share locations my children have air tags in their backpacks so that I can track them there is there's something about that that is supposed to make one feel safer but that is absolutely inducing a kind of anxiety definitely that yeah do you feel like that's really

20:01happening air tag with the kids do you feel like that's healthy for you like just doesn't it doesn't actually make you feel better doing that well this I'm coming I'm reckoning with this right now yeah and I suspect it it can give one a false sense of security I mean here I am hundreds of miles away what could I actually do if in fact they needed me there yeah right now is it better for me to have a an absolute understanding of what's going on I know in my mind the story that I tell myself is was better to know than not know um but when that knowing becomes a kind of compulsion there's something about that that is almost certainly counterproductive that isn't healthy that that perhaps he infeeds into the anxiety which has what other implications what am I not doing when I'm kind of bound up with that sort of fear not sure there's this is exactly what my theory is of the post 9-11 world is that we are just more aware of all the things that could happen and we see all the things that are happening at any moment and he gives us this really skewed

21:05interpretation of what dangers exist around us these are all the things but probably in the perverse sense yes yeah right but if I wanted to understand the dangers or harms that we're existing in the country right now I went on to Google and I went fired up Google News and I just asked like shooting news alert I could get dozens of hits from past week I could find reports of different murders that happen any zip code that I travel to and I could fixate on that and I could ignore the fact that millions of people have gone through that area in the past several years and that people continue to live their lives pretty safely wherever they go but the thing that I'm aware of is the risks that could happen and I think it's very normal for the human mind to be alert to risks but it is abnormal the information ecosystem that we're in because we get all of the stream of possibility that could go wrong and our brains are not wired to filter that out we can only think about things like we remember these things and we wait them more than we ever possibly could whereas even

22:10just the 90s pre-internet it's it says much the internet is it is 9-11 I think where you could I mean just thinking about you going home from school or you going to the movie theater I think it's a really good example of when we're kids the way that we did that was mom drops you off six o'clock there's that bench I'm going to come meet you at that bench at eight yeah be there at eight and then the tatters cut and you're in the world and then you're free and there's in whatever happens with between then and now is between you and your god and mom will just know she's going to find you that bench you're in trouble and now you can just know where your kids are and you can be thinking about what's happening the whole time but when you don't have that information then you don't have anything to fix it on I also I guess when I kind of ruminate on the other changes or like the world shifts I mean I'm trying to dig for I guess some of the non-obvious things so it's probably worth saying obviously like we launched into these multi decade wars in the

23:13Middle East and I mean that is the but like I'm assuming that's well-trodden ground and the people listening to this show like yeah the top line thing is we started two wars that were incredibly destabilized in the Middle East that have roundifications we're living with still today obviously as a human and economic policy hundreds of thousands of people mostly are ackeys and afghanies died also thousands of us soldiers and completely reshaped and disrupted this region to add also domestic policy department of Homeland Security Patriotation of DHS exactly all those things again I think well-trodden ground but the other one that comes to mind for me that's like maybe a little less obvious or a little more under the radar it's just like the conspiracy theory world oh brother I mean did you ever watch loose change I was a loose change guy my dad shut me up fast another vivid memory that I have is being like in high school

24:14and coming home and talking my parents at like 9-11 was an inside job and my dad just being like what the fuck are you talking about you know and being like Jeff Fjord can't know steel beams you know like and thinking I'd like unlock something and like him having to like slowly deconstruct all the bullshit and I think back on that time now and I'm like embarrassed about you know how how goalable was but in the end it was like I was a target audience like some random teenager on the internet there were some movies too for five weeks who like wanted to know and it was the things that they're telling you were wrong yeah you just watched the matrix right yeah yeah uh and you know it is like I see it today I was just looking there's that incredible Twitter account the guy who's doing the 90s 2001 live yeah 2001 live and like he post these news alerts if he's a journalist living in the past 25 years ago and he's been doing running this account online

25:15super interesting just like what was the news exactly 25 years ago and it's all been building up I mean he said I didn't create this account to like lead up to 9-11 but now everybody is following the account because they know September 11th is coming and they're like curious to see how he's covering it and uh he was a lot like he's been talking about the research that's gone into what he's going to do on September 11th in re-reporting all the news that happened that day and in the comments of that post there are like a bunch of people being still saying you know are you going to deal with like how did you know towers have been followed whatever you know like and like the jet fuel melting steel beam stuff like people posting the temperature what about the detonation moments yeah yeah and they and there's like all of that still alive and well in the ecosystem which is crazy to me because I was like falling for it in seventh grade um but now when I look back on it

26:16I think this is one of the first events that went through the internet version of the like conspiratorial layer building right we had talk radio and you know niche novels and like email chains and stuff like that but this was to me in my opinion that like 2004 to like 2009 period was when there were these kinds of videos and like post on the internet and stuff that were like truly going viral quote unquote in the first essence of the word and the initial sort of iteration of that and loose change was definitely one of them and I think a lot of the formulas been repeated outside of September 11th over and over again now which is really interesting and I see it all the time in the way different news events or process on the internet and a lot of that reminds me of like the old loose change formula which is really awesome quick cuts and like

27:17quotes taken out of context and cherry pick facts that are set in really serious really like jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams boom cut yeah that's a great point but it doesn't have to yeah awesome music right great video footage uh and then just like the internet to disseminate it and I think that is something that was kind of down stream of the 9-11 culture too for like questioning the government yes and there's another element to that which is that questioning the government's good and healthy and also I don't I'm going to say this really carefully but like there's a lot of motive questioning about our response 9-11 that kind of lines up in a way that could support a theory before you get into the specifics of it like there were companies that benefited from being able to sell arms to the government because of military expansion as a after 9-11 and if you just follow the follow the money and see who benefits it's very easy to support something where you're speculating like that and you just add the facts to support whatever

28:19mindset you have and yeah I mean my opinion I did say like I think the internet is as impactful for our culture today as 9-11 was not more so now you can just kind of find the things that support the theory you have rather than the other way around and I do think that matters and I think it matters that the conspiracy theories that are taking hold now broader like in a broader picture you have reason to build a theory around it probably don't have enough reason to like build a world view around that theory but I can understand how those things take purges. I mean the the fact that today conspiracy theories about 9-11 are in some respects perhaps more prominent in the culture than they were at the time perhaps at any time since is is distressing and has been a topic of conversation over recent weeks in a bunch of contexts that I've been in and this is despite the fact that there's been 9-11 Commission report so it's the federal governments authorized version of events accounting for its own mistakes leading up to the events

29:23of September 11th and despite the fact that there's been tremendous amount of journalism like quality journalism certainly the popular mechanics stuff that was published in response to a lot of the allegations and product projects like loose change if that stuff was out there it was prominent in the culture and despite all of that the the interest in and belief in those conspiracies has grown and perhaps there's something that's happened in the culture to get subscribed to that it feels that way it certainly I will say that it feels more prominent than it even at the time and it's become more prominent alongside a belly of other conspiracy theories from completely unrelated things okay because I feel like it's actually proof of the exact same mechanism that causes conspiracy theories to hold that goes to us thinking they're getting more prominent which is you can find the things that you already predispose to find so I believe and

30:25it's really hard to get accurate information on relative proportions of beliefs but just because the people I know I think are you'd find a fairly decent sample of Americans I know it's definitely going to be skewed and biased but I don't know anybody who would say I definitely think 9-11 was a inside job and Bush definitely did it but I can find easily communities of people that say that online but I don't think that means that more people actually believe it what I wouldn't expect to find is a lot of definite belief about the specific persons behind these events what I would expect there to be a lot of support for is the general sense that they aren't telling us something they aren't telling us everything there's more to this story that is well understood and the official narrative can't be trusted I think that there is not a majority of Americans who feel that way are people around the world to be totally honest but it is a considerable minority

31:26of the population that feels that way it's just hard I think to understand what a considerable minority is yeah is it this is true is it 10% is it like you have some work done some work on that mean probably I've also seen the way that they pull up before elections so yeah well defining it is also tough because it's like I would probably say that the government has been totally forthcoming about elements of the story around that I mean it took just objectively true yeah yeah it took forever for the commissions I mean just to war on a made up reason right and just yesterday I think in New York I mean I've only read a little bit of headlines about this because we were all on transit but it looked like so around mom Donnie I asked the government to release these papers finally acknowledging that like they understood how toxic ground zero was and all these fire fires yeah and like we got that's 25 years it took for them they just like officially it was like this thing that you know John Stewart's been banging on about for 20 years they finally like put into the public record so you know I think a group of hijackers

32:35attacked America and that part of the that like essence of the story is real and you know the Twin Towers collapsed because 2747 jets were flown into them but like I don't that the government has told us everything it knows about the motives and how prepared they were for it and how much they've stopped it yeah what role they had yeah all right we've got to take a quick break let me come back a little bit less somber of an anniversary I think you know I'll just conclude by saying for anybody who certainly didn't live through it it's an event that I think is worth understanding your history about especially if you're American for me it is a time not just to reflect on like the people who died in September 11th but also the mistakes that were made with the kind of blood curdling rage that existed afterward I mean I think both of those stories are worth ruminating on and I certainly have some friends and family whom I'm thinking about today so

33:40on on this anniversary but yes when we come back we'll keep drinking and cheer up a little bit we'll be right back after this quick break all right so this is the I guess we're calling it the main anniversary show yeah we have the serious and somber anniversary to start which obviously is the 25th anniversary September 11th and the attacks on 9-11 but also quietly we passed the seven-year anniversary of tangles existence which I normally make a little bit of a hub of about I think this was the first year I've I have not sent a newsletter just like acknowledging this seven years what's the exact day that we've been using sometime in August the first I believe the first newsletter I sent to like 13 friends and family members was on July 31st 2019 but it was sort of like a beta

34:49test I think that was when I was calling it the shuffle not to angle which was a terrible name really changed it yeah bullet dodged and and then I took some feedback and sort of iterated I don't even think that first edition had the my take section that was something a lot of people asked for and then I think a couple weeks later I like posted the newsletter on Twitter and like emailed everybody I knew and said sign up for this newsletter and then I sent the first newsletter which was like sometime in mid August so typically around mid August I paused to acknowledge the anniversary and yeah I don't know it felt a part of the reason I feel like I wanted to talk about with you guys and sort of spend a little time on the show chatting about it I mean this is I think the three of us have now been doing this for a couple of years feels like over a year since you've been here for sure and you and I maybe two years we had a brief period where it was just one-on-one I can't remember what we've even talked about I remember one thing was the congress draft

35:53that was fun that was a good episode we should do that we should do that with Camille that'd be interesting yeah we drafted members of con we made our own each made our own 10 person congress uh but you know the part of the reason I want to talk about is because I think one of the questions that I get the most from our audience um is people who say do you think what you're doing actually matters or works like sincerely just like no yeah it's just blunt it feels like you're trying to do something that's incredibly hard you're saying we're gonna bring these views in from across the political spectrum you're gonna try and get people to change their minds about stuff and it's a very cynical question sometimes it's asked sincerely sometimes it's meant to be pointed and like a criticism of us you know sane washing Trump or being like secret libtards or whatever people think about us um but I think it's a worthwhile question to ruminate on at least once a year probably more than that but an anniversary is as good a time as any so I'm kind of interested in

36:54exploring that and also just like how the works change because I do think it the environment has changed and just to again maybe this is like a time machine episode two uh just to go back I mean 2019 July 2019 trumpet bit in office for three years things were not normal I don't want to pretend they were normal but compared to what we have right now things were pretty good pre-COVID which is another 9-11 issue events in terms of magnitude the economy was good we had all just gotten a fat tax cut I remember I was getting I was making like 70 grand a year Trump cut taxes and I started taking home like $300 more on every paycheck or something and I was like this is I'm a Republican stamp the day like tax cuts let's do it like I was broke living in New York City um so like it was it was like a different era and I do feel like again it wasn't normal Trump was so disruptive and he was doing a lot of crazy stuff and a lot of stuff that I thought was like a born but there

37:58were a lot of people who were like really opposed to him who'd been fear mongering about him and were sort of coming around to him before COVID that was happening I wouldn't even say coming around to him as much as just accepting that some of the worst fears were probably not true right and the Russia investigation just kind of blown it up and then on the Democratic side we were heading into the primary and it was Joe Biden Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders it was it was like who's gonna be the net or is the party gonna go left are they gonna go back to this traditionalist whatever and then in those early days of COVID like I go back and look at those additions that was the stuff I was covering was what happened at the end of the Russian investigation who was gonna win the Democratic primary all these arguments about like who the new Democratic voter was then Biden won then Biden won the primary which was at the time not shocking but sort of I mean before South Carolina he didn't really seem like he had a shot he looked really people to judge was in the mix there's like most people love to him and then and then he won the presidential election

39:04and then well then first then COVID started and then Biden won the presidential election after COVID had like retabits on everything and and it was just like when I started this it was yeah it was just such a different environment much more the conversation was definitely about policy oriented stuff I think that part is changed I've been like trying to think like what was different I look back to those additions there's a lot more policy debate I think then we have now nothing we don't still do a lot of policy stuff but there's a lot more oh this is novel territory we're waiting into what does this thing mean you know what's it mean about the electorate yeah or future or Trump's done this thing he's like testing the boundaries of the institution like is that good or bad or like that is a lot of the debate when you know four or five six seven years ago there was a lot of is forgiving suit alone debt a good idea or not you know like there was a lot more of that kind of content and I think can't to be totally candid

40:09I think people were more open to the project I think right now is the hardest it's ever been to do the work that we're doing which is to me saying come under this roof share space with people you disagree with open your mind to the idea that whatever side you're not on has good ideas read then consume them you don't have to agree with them not trying to like get everybody to hold hands and agree but if you learn something that you wouldn't have come across in your little algorithmic bubble then that is us doing our job in my opinion and if you see yourself represented somewhere in the newsletter of the podcast your view a spouse by either one of the tangled staff writers or somebody who we cite then like that's us doing our job well um I think that hits is just it's just harder yeah and I don't know that the algorithm at the algorithm or like the bubbles are more defined for people but I think Trump is such a singular political figure that it really has just

41:16become you either support him or you don't and there's a purity test on both sides the less purity test is like if you support Trump or if you think Trump does anything good or you spend any time talking about the good things he's doing like you're actively harming the country and then the right like Coltty leader purity test is you can dislike him he's can't say anything right you can or you can't criticize him without acknowledging that he's like the greatest president or that the left is evil right right um I mean so it's hard it is a hard it is a hard moment and I think a lot of the listeners of this show probably don't know the origins for the origin story of Tangle um and I won't monologue on that too much longer because I am really interested in your guys thoughts about your perspective on how things have changed but just to reiterate like for me it was I grew up in a politically divided place where people from across the political spectrum were like in my life close to me I love them and I could sit down

42:21at dinner and we could all talk shit about politics and it was like normal and fine and we could break bread and bus each other's chops and at the end of the day it was like hugs goodbye whatever and there was a period of my life when that changed when it was like friends started telling me I can't be in the room with this person I'll come to a party if they're not there or like parents stop talking to old friends who differed put like the mood shifted and I was like this is bad broken so there was this sort of like altruistic motivation I want to go want to do something that's like fixes this brokenness and then I went looking for a product as a consumer that was like I'm tired of Trump proposes a policy I have to read the New York Times editorial board read the Wall Street Journal editorial board watch Ben Shapiro's YouTube show listen to Podsave America go do Rush Limbal talk radio and watch Fox News and then go read Huff

43:23Post and whatever you know like and then at the end of 10 hours of doing all this research I could be like okay now I understand the best views from across the political spectrum why can't I just go find this in one place and I was like okay I can make a product that doesn't it just gotta be other people that want that that's been true that part's been true I mean we've I'm really extraordinarily proud of what we've done um but I do think it's harder now to sell the people than it's ever been in my experience so it's a great seven year anniversary but it's also tough how do you sell it you muted yourself on your mic you know like a rookie this this like I'm explaining the tool right I'm I'm digesting a lot of what you said and there's a sense in which the work that we do broadly one could call it journalism I do think that the phrase sense making is as more explanatory power we live in this world that is vastly complicated

44:29where we are overwhelmed by information and data which is readily available but difficult to find and there's I have this strong sense that prior to a particular point of time and we can try to figure out pinpoint exactly what that is I don't know if it's just Trump I think it's bigger than that there's it was mostly encyclopedic just organizing the world for me making these things readily available in a particular place which huge it was hugely valuable that is what I wanted from journalism um and it seems what most people wanted today on the other hand it almost feels as though what people want in addition to that organizing of information is something that is perhaps a little more like therapy like tell me it will be okay and validate the way that I'm feeling about the world help me understand that I'm not alone in this um and that's a very different sort of role to play um certainly in a world like that you want oracles who will tell you what's

45:30likely to happen and make predictions yeah but I think even more than that you want you want priests you want uh a kind of convening of these these services for us to just again I was even thinking about conversation I overheard earlier today when we were out on this excursion together and there was someone who was hosting the excursion who said I know things are terrible and I know who I know everything is wrong but you know you have to tell me in a different sort of way and that just kind of rang in my ear in a particular way like I do podcasts I show up on um television participating in our discussions and at angle and editorial settings but oftentimes when I interact with audiences who are consuming the output when I'm not talking to them directly but just reading their responses the responses are often somewhere along the lines of well where do you fit in all of

46:31this what is it you're trying to tell me like what is your actual world view are you with them or you with us so I can know whether or not I trust you and I suspect that's part of the challenge with a publication like Tangle Today and many respects here you're you know booking the the dominant trend of playing for one team or another and trying to sell a product that in some respects is an a four different time and maybe trying to pull people back to those earlier sensibilities we're talking a lot about some sense from nostalgia today green eyes love it let the kids run away yeah let us all read things and come make our own minds I'm thinking about this is a soapbox you too have heard me get on before in various degrees so I'll be brief but if you haven't then maybe I'll try to be a little longer which is we all really want to have somebody who's an authority on things and I mean my job I'm an editor so I'm dealing with grammar and definitions all the time and in English there is no singular authority for anything we have a rich complicated

47:32etymology and we have confusing rules and we steal from every language this isn't French where there's an academy that tells you exactly what things mean this isn't France damn America the free and fries and we get to kind of choose the things that makes sense to us yeah and that can go really really wrong it can be I don't like the way that fact makes me feel I'm going to find something to support my world view or it can go really really wrong the other way and say I don't know what to make of this somebody tell me what to think because it's too hard to make sense and I kind of I understand either perspective of it but I think the thing that we try to do is to say you get to do some of this work yourself like we're going to tell you our opinions we're going to tell you a lot of other opinions too and if it doesn't make sense you can tell us and you can come to your mind about it and that's the thing that makes the US part like that I think that is essential to our culture and I think that's driving what we do but the thing that I think hurts us the most is people that come to tango right now I get the feeling and I get the sense and sometimes

48:36the out great statement that they want us to tell them that they're wrong and if when we don't do it that's a problem on us because we're the referee right and they see us as the referee and they want us to make the right call and like there's no such thing as a referee here and we can tell you the way that we see it but that is that is the best that we do and that's up to you to have the conversation with the person you're disagreeing with of them whoever's representing that in your mind and figure out where they might be misunderstanding or just as likely where you might be misunderstanding and it's a tough thing to kind to try to bridge because I think most people are coming to tango saying I want to see the thing that I think and I want to see the thing that they think but I also want to see the thing that they think it proven wrong and that doesn't always get delivered on and it's a tough thing to try to build a profitable business around at the end of the day that's what we're trying to do and you know I'm trying not to be like whiny about it I hope I'm not it's just more like

49:36this is a very complicated thing and people see it in a lot of different ways. I'm sort of above two minds about it because on the one hand I agree it is hard I think we're like fighting in the attention economy with our hands tied behind our back in a very obvious way which is just like we could be really bombastic or over the top I mean our our audience is so sophisticated and attuned to this that they even notice when we like I've seen criticism something like our social media channel will publish something that's just like a little bit rage baby or like what's the viral clip of the day that like we're just like participating in the ecosystem and people will be like this isn't when I come to tangle for you know I don't want this which I love and respect because that that I am trying to build something that is like I hope above the fray a little bit and also it's working like I don't want to pretend it's not you know it's not it's it's not as if it isn't working we have this huge audience of

50:38the half million people we have a profitable stable media business thank you to our subscribers which is basically unheard of in my experience as a media professional so I'm incredibly grateful for that but it but it's like we're still a big fish and a small ponder a small fish and like the big ocean of corporate media and maybe maybe that's just just what we'll be and that's fine um you know I don't want to be like the next CNN or something or you know I like taking their audience and doing something that's different better than them but um yeah I do get the sense I suppose that when people read or listen to the show they read the newsletter listen to show there's something unavoidable about the fact that everybody globs onto the my take section yeah and when I conceived of it I think like the story that I told myself first of all it was something that

51:41the audience asked for like the very first time when newsletters didn't have the my take section it was just like here's the last thing here's what the right thing and then a bunch of my friends and family wrote and were like well what do you think you're the political journalist you're the guy who's been like working in politics like tell me because at that time I was a beat reporter you know covering congress and national politics so like tell me what you think and I was like oh yeah I should do that and I sort of like justified in my head is like hey I love to write and I want to share my views and be like it's an active transparency like I will you will know at the end of the news that are the person who's providing this information where they're coming from and I think it is the thing I think the take is still what distinguishes us and makes it more interesting than like other sort of non-partisan news outlets but there's a catch which is just like it's very rare people write into us and are like upset about one of the six other opinions we publish in the newsletters it happens like that was the one that happens but it's but it's pretty rare and I'm like I hope they're reading all the other stuff

52:45because my my perspective has always been you know we had an old Frisbee coach used to say like have the confidence to perform and the humility to prepare which is an expression I love and live by but the way I sort of apply in tango is like have the confidence to say what you think honestly but the humility except that you might be wrong yeah and I really I'm confident enough to share my view honestly and lean into being honest with audience about what I think but I have the humility to say like I got this one wrong I'm out of my depth like I'm kind of a lot on AI stuff we've been talking about this latest AI hubbub all the time the new fear mongering you can get to me by the way I think I'm on your side now let's go but yeah the truth is like I have I don't have any technical understanding of what's really happening and I know that that doesn't

53:45mean I shouldn't be able to participate but I have the humility to see that so I know that I can be wrong whatever and I say all that just to say like I never conceived of myself or members of the staff is being like the people offering the truth what I wanted was people who are willing to engage and wrestle with complicated ideas and be open-minded and doing like a thoughtful way and offer analysis and opinion writing that wasn't explicitly playing for one side or the other that was just like here's what we think when we after we take in all these arguments and I hope that there's enough people out there that value that that this will be a sort of successful enterprise and you know I always people always press me about like well how could you engage with you know depending on what side they're on like these ideas that aren't truth that are on facts or whatever and the thing that we say is like we're not typically wrestling with baseline factual

54:46questions I know that like that's what everybody wants to thank you and once the conversation is but it's not like is the sky blue or not or is it raining out or not the question is like for some people who come outside and it's raining they're like on the way to a job interview and they just did an hour of their hair and makeup and the rain happens and they're like this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me I'm gonna ruin this ruining this job interview I just saw all this stuff it's like it's horrible experience it's raining out and other people step outside and it's raining they're like I forgot to water the plants but it's raining so there's a chore checked off the list great day it's not the rain it's like they all agree that it's raining it just means different things to them and and that is my true I know that there are examples of I'm not saying that like we never disagree about the facts I'm just saying that like 80% of the arguments that we grapple with are not like even is climate change real or not the sort of environmentalists have

55:48mostly won that argument I like new younger Republicans believe that climate change is real and the humans are causing it they just differ about what to do about it there's also some disagreement about to the extent which humans are driving it whatever like a lot of the debate and that's like the classic example is climate change it's like the hardest we're probably the one where like there's the most factual dispute but even in that one a lot of it is like how do we respond to this thing we're not in like what's the appropriate level like there's the bench up here response of the best thing to do is bring the cultures and countries that are causing a lot of pollution through coal up to the 21st century and modernize them bring capitalism them bring production to them and it's a different theory about how to respond we don't have Republicans doing snowballs on the congressional for anymore it's just like it's important that and most of the debates aren't like that and so yeah I don't know I I guess to answer the question

56:48directly like I get emails every single day literally every single day and maybe we should do a better job sharing them from people who are like this newsletter this podcast YouTube channel whatever I can talk to my dad about politics now I can or we have a I look meeting ground with my spouse who's a Republican or a Democrat and like we can talk about politics now and we have like this baseline thing that we both trust and both come to and there are a lot of people out there who feel that way and and so I still feel really proud of that and I feel like it's working really well in that respect even if like you know five out of the 10 people who come in the door don't like what they get because they actually get the thing they we told them they're gonna get which is like opinions they're not gonna agree with and whatever else many people come in and unsubscribe really if I'm not gonna pretend that doesn't happen like what we're doing doesn't work for everybody but we have a lot of converts along the way who have come in and stuck around and so I feel good about

57:54that part in particular um but yeah I maybe to just put some of this to you guys I guess before we get out of here I'd be curious like how or if you think it's changed you know how the climate has changed in the last few years or humans are causing it yeah the political climate um because that was sort of one of the baseline questions was like you know the climate has changed and it's become a lot harder to do the work that we're doing we're asset range yeah um cheers to me that was good you know I I think it's harder and I think Trump has made I'm not gonna beat around the bush I think Trump has made it harder because he's a very divisive character and he feeds off the division um but yeah I don't know do you guys also feel that way I mean the the division is there um and he certainly has the the capacity

58:57to be divisive I think in the Trump administration especially the second iteration of the Trump administration leans into controversy in a way that's uniquely provocative and inspires that kind of fractures since in our politics but what I think is the most palpable um characteristic of the polity right now is just exhaustion that you get the sense of exhaustion from the readership and audiences you get the sense of exhaustion from the leadership itself from from politicians certainly the who is more exhausted than congressional Republicans just to energize and put some actual data on this I mean we survey people when they cancel or unsubscribe which none of you will ever know since you'll never cancel when people leave tangled they get this survey message that's like you just give us some feedback about why you left and for years

59:59from like year one to year six basically the most common response was you're either too left or too right and it was people unsubscribing after like a particularly definitive or like strongly worded take where we were on the opposite side of them and the take writer was and they would say I'm out you guys are liberals you guys are conservatives whatever um now in the last year by far the number one reason is um I need a break from the news or I don't have time for the emails which to me is the same thing because we never got that response before and it's just like people are just yeah they're just saying like I need a break and um and it's not like you piss me off or I don't love your mission well I attempts to like really kind messages like and love what you guys are doing always support your work but like I need a mental health break um and so yeah to your point I don't think at least from from the we have that evidence internally and periodically like I get a report on that every week about why people are leaving and that is now

1:01:03consistently every weekend we got the number one answer which has never happened before and that's a new battle for us to sort of reckon with I think yeah I mean I think even the the Trump White House certainly from the president on down you get the sense that he is less engaged it's one thing to be a lame duck but what's happening there feels even even stranger and before the midterms have even occurred you you kind of have the sense of him kind of waving the white flag he understands that they're likely to do very badly he seems to kind of want to dodge responsibility for that but there's a kind of shoulder shrug almost there um and I think Democrats in general is there a kind of exhaustion there too there is but I think it's it's uh mixed with a great deal of uncertainty uh rudderlessness um that that also feels very undeniable I feel a little bit of a two myself I can't remember the last time that I wrote a take on any policy oriented thing or any larger we

1:02:07did an econ update today for instance and the last thing that I did before that was about the national debt I can't remember the last time I didn't have a take that didn't end with it's not going to matter anyway it's not going to change like honestly that happens a lot like we're talking about the national debt we talk every time we talk about the federal deficit we're like everyone wants to address it here are the five things you can do cut social security spending don't want to do that sherry cut Medicare Medicaid healthcare don't want to do that yet that military budget yeah interest rates on the debt raise taxes those are the things to do none of those things have a majority so we're not going to do them take over like that gets tiring to say and it gets tiring to talk about foreign policy where we talk about all the things that could go into a decision we're like it's probably not going to change what we do and like I think it's a little frustrating day and day out to do that kind of stuff and it does seem like a dam's going to break at some point especially when to your point cameo you do get a sense of apathy and maybe

1:03:08the better word is cynicism out of the white house where you understand that there's bad press and opposition to the ideals are the way in which they're expressing them through policy and the response to that is fuck it like America and now that's the conversation obviously nothing's going to change because the the way that we're interacting with these problems through distraction or through arguing about things that don't matter and it does feel like to your point and again i'm sensitive to the three guys talking to nostalgia about a couple years ago thing but it did feel like it wasn't that long ago that we're talking about a student debt forgiveness going to work or not and that was a swing that was not the end that's why we and even Trump likes talking about mdani in New York and we're overindexing on New York so much but that guy's trying policies and we get to talk about whether or not they're working and I think that's the stuff that we'd love to their a teeth into and I think it's stuff American people love their teeth into it's just like that's a chewy bit of stake that requires digestion and we've just been eating candy for years and it's hard to win yourself off of it yeah well uh here's hoping that in the next seven years

1:04:15we can eat a lot of steak I guess high protein diet high protein diet we'll be right back after this quick break I mean as it can I throw a question to you about tango before we get out of here I know we wanted to keep this tight but what do you is there anything you'd like to do differently in the next seven years or anything in particular that you would really like to achieve yeah it's a good question thanks and and maybe I'll do something else too while you think about it you said earlier that tango is a small fish and like a really big pond and I actually think it's a little different than that at the seven year mark the pond is enormous and it is filled with fish yeah the tango is one of the more sizable fish in that pond that's probably and it is also true just a really high quality fish there this has a uniquely valuable well informed audience tango serves this interesting

1:05:22role in the ecosystem where certainly you more than anyone else here is kind of offering your opinion there but also just the hierarchy of of quality links that are provided for every story we're driving substantial again high quality traffic to lots and lots of publications it's a really unique role to play in the media ecosystem and the fact that tango as a company is financially healthy and sustainable and self-sustaining and is not in hawk to anyone is really liberating it means that when I ask you a question about what do you hope to do in the next seven years like the possibility that you could have it's not just survive is not the mandate which a lot of those major media outlets that you know we also have relationships with and sometimes talk to and on like they they hope to survive another 12 24 months and there's no concern about that here it's a question of whether or not you want to keep doing it yeah um so for that reason I'm very interested in what your what

1:06:25motivates you I appreciate all that I mean I would say a few things I mean first and foremost I get out of bed in the morning because like I genuinely love the work I think it's I think like what the government's doing is really important I like learning about it I feel passionate about offering news and information to people that I know is reliable and trustworthy and balanced and fair and complex at a cost that's either affordable or free and like so it's accessible to you and I just like it's that part is not a bullshit stick to me like I genuinely feel passionate and like proud of that um also the team that we've assembled is incredible like we're here at this retreat and it's I want to work hard for the people and like I want this to work so all of us get to keep working together and we can keep building this business and building this publication

1:07:28whatever as a group like I feel I feel really that feels really exciting to me we're at this main retreat I mean you can't see him mckele is literally filming this YouTube I never met this guy in person until we showed up and made he's been like editing our videos for a month because he's one of our new videoires and it's like walking in a room and meeting mckele and hugging and like getting out to go on the boat today and like it's like it's really rewarding to just have somebody in the room who I'm like this guy gets it he cares about it he's like leaves in the work and um I created something that like employs a person who wants to do something that we all feel like is good for the country and uh that part's really exciting and then you know in terms of what we do I mean I think our audience has been really clear um they want more of what we've been doing so like don't upend or change your product in a way that like ruins it so we don't do that they want us to do more original work so like put resources into making original on the ground

1:08:31videos to you know doing actual original reporting to just like invest in the product invest in making the product better which I really want to do um and then this show I think like the youtube stuff the video the multimedia elements like those are things that I care about uh uh like uh the newsletter was the core product and a lot of people always prefer to read and always prefer to read but there's like a huge audience of people who prefer this medium and I want to keep putting more time and effort into this um so those things are like very top of mind for me I hope two three four five six seven years from now the audience continues to grow it doesn't have to but I hope it does because I feel like the product is good for people's brains um it's doing the work is good for my brain so I feel like the output I hope is good for other people's brains and I feel pretty confident about that um and as that audience grows it becomes more imperative

1:09:34that like the power brokers talk to us you know members of congress presidential candidates sitting presidents etc I I want the Trump interview you know like I want I want to I want to ask the questions that I feel like a lot of the typical players in the press don't ask and I want the opportunities to do that uh so I hope like in the years to come we're already seeing it now like in the last few years I've been getting more and more access to members of congress some of them who come on camera and talk but a lot of them who talk to me off the record and inform the views that I espouse in the newsletter because they're willing to be candid anonymously which I don't love that arrangement but it's how it happens um and I'm I'm just hoping that like that momentum keeps building and we can give like our audience it's been around for a while access to some of those people too without becoming like an access journalism publication I don't want to be political or axiose or whatever I respect what they do I read their stuff every day I think

1:10:37it's really important but like we have we are I we kind of have like the normy outside the DC bubble vibe independent you know like I like that um and I don't want to lose that so it's like sort of finding the balance of growing and also holding on to like the core thing that I think has made us really valuable to people um so yeah the short answer is invest in the products and uh improve the things we're doing and make them better and also not let the ship go down because I really like employing people and I love the team we have together and um you know so there's like business decisions that have to be made but I think to your point I should probably give us more credit for being a big fish and a huge pond whatever um people ask a lot of times people who are starting out coming in there like hey I'm launching this news our launched this podcast I want advice like you've made it you don't have any investors you have this team 12 people whatever uh and it feels good to be asked it feels like okay I was like hit

1:11:42a certain status that people are asking me like I remember being in their shoes and when I started tango I emailed a million people and asked them for advice um and the thing that I've come back to over and over again telling people is just like ignore all the bullshit like there's no hack you can't like can't like tack your way out of this or whatever you have to provide good valuable content period end of conversation and if it's like a unique offering your odds are way better so like you could go do something that's already being done and do it better than somebody and that's a hard thing to do if it's really good and valuable content but if you think of something that's like a fresh concept which I think tango was for how to cover politics uh then that's sort of like the unlock just like don't start a short form business newsletter we have like nine million of those and Morton Brew doesn't really well uh I had a woman who came out to me at a conference recently and told me that she started a newsletter for people looking for scholarships to go to college

1:12:46brilliant idea that is a good I was like I've never heard of anything like that she's like I don't have any competitors I target high school kids looking to find scholarships I the newsletters all about how to get your scholarship etc etc and now when they're graduating college she's starting like a second newsletter for them that's how to get a job like you're brilliant you're gonna be really successful good fresh idea whatever um so yeah just like trying to fill that space valuable novel and doing that on repeat and I hope people stick around so um yeah here's the seven more years I guess uh cheers main the main episode the universe I'll get the here's the other seven years to you guys look at him and we'll see you guys next week I hope our executive editor and founder is me Isaac Sol and our executive producer is John Wall today's episode was edited and engineered by DeRitaubes our editorial staff is led by managing editor are he white spin with senior editor will

1:13:49pay back and associate editors hardry moorhead and belly saw music for the podcast was produced by diet 75 to learn more about tango and sign up for a membership please visit our website at retangle.com