The most popular non-political Tangles

It's not always politics...

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, ad-free, non-partisan politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from the right and left on the news of the day.

I’m on my honeymoon this week, so I’ve scheduled a few posts for you while I’m gone.

Today’s newsletter is a brief look back at five of the most popular Tangle editions that had nothing (or little) to do with politics. I have gauged “popular” by a mixture of data and personal experience: the editions that drove the most responses, comments, shares, social media interactions, and also the ones that seemed to drive the strongest emotions.

— Rest in Peace, Arthur. In this Tangle edition, I wrote about my fish, Arthur, who died during quarantine. I can honestly say I did not know what the response would be when we published this piece, but it generated more replies than just about anything I’ve ever written in Tangle — and almost all of them were positive (there were a few folks who did not appreciate the deviation from politics!)

— It’s morning in New York (subscribers only). In this Tangle edition, I wrote about a random morning I had in New York City in the middle of the pandemic. It came at a time when the virus seemed to be receding, and when the city was — in a sense — waking back up. It was May 22 of 2020, and we did not yet know what we were in for.

— UFOs are here, so buckle up. In this Tangle edition, I wrote about the history of UFOs, the government’s involvement in that history, and what we can expect going forward. Not only did this edition draw a ton of positive responses, it also drew a lot of sign-ups for a potential new weekly newsletter that would focus exclusively on UFOs.

— So, I quit my job today… In this Tangle edition, I announced that I was quitting my job as an editor to pursue Tangle full-time. I can’t believe it’s only been three months since I published this, but it has been some of the best three months of my life.

— The People vs. Wall Street. In this Tangle edition, I wrote about the meme stock craze and how a bunch of people on Reddit managed to send our stock market into a total chaotic tailspin. Some of this has aged well, some less-so, but at the time I wrote it it was one of the most shared pieces I’d ever published. Of course, this one has a touch of politics, but the focus really was on my own experience in this bizarre, unbelievable week of stock market chaos (that has continued to this day).

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