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Lost Debate

Things Are Really Bad

Lost Debate

The Branch

News, Society & Culture, Politics

4.6607 Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ravi welcomes back Tangle News founder Isaac Saul to discuss his viral essay, “Things Are Really Bad Right Now,” and why he believes recent actions should trouble Americans across the spectrum. They dig into alleged abuses in immigration enforcement, killings at sea, politicized prosecutions, and mounting pressure on the press. Isaac explains why abandoning party loyalty—and focusing only on whether leaders uphold basic principles—led him to sound the alarm, and how his mixed audience reacted. The conversation closes with a challenge: what values are we willing to defend, no matter who holds power?

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to The Lost Debate, a show for political eclectics. I'm Robbie Gupta. And in a bit, we're going to hear from our friend Isaac Saul. I think he has broken the record as our most recurring guests we've ever had. I haven't talked to him in a bit. We start with this piece he wrote where, you know, Isaac has, you know, Tangle News is he presents the right wing or conservative

0:21.8

perspective. He presents the left wing or liberal perspective. And then he gives his opinions. And he

0:26.4

has amassed a huge audience of people who trust him from all across the political spectrum.

0:30.9

When people rate news sites, I forget, I think it's called ground news or some one of these

0:35.6

sites that like rates people on objectivity and balance, he always scores

0:40.9

the best or among the best for new sites for his objectivity.

0:46.3

And he's somebody I admire a ton.

0:48.3

And the reason why I had him on is he kind of broke the fourth wall or whatever and wrote

0:53.3

this piece that was like, I just think

0:54.9

there's a lot happening right now that I can't pretend to be like on the one hand and on the other

0:59.3

hand about like it's really bad. And so we talk about that piece. He and I both share our

1:04.3

perspectives. Those of you know me probably get a sense for how alarmed I am about some

1:08.8

of the things happening in the U.S. right now. And so we talk all about that. And then towards the end, maybe the final third or

1:16.3

a quarter, we talk about my time in Italy, cooking, how Isaac stays sane while reading and

1:23.0

consuming the news all the time. And so for those of you don't want to hear the doom and gloom,

1:44.8

you can fast forward all the way to that. We could probably put a time code in the show notes. But if you want to hear my unvarnished and Isaac's unvarnished thoughts on just how out of control things are right now, you can listen to the first part. A couple of housekeeping items. One is I'm starting a writer's group. You can call it a workshop.

1:45.9

I don't like that term.

1:51.3

I call it a finishing school for 2026 where I'm going to be taking on a small group of writers who want to finish a project, whether they want to write a book or do a narrative podcast,

1:57.5

write a script or whatever.

1:58.7

And it's going to be emphasized on the doing,

2:01.3

not just hearing from experts, although we will hear from people in the publishing industry

2:05.1

and claimed authors and things like that, but it would really be me working with people and

...

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