PREVIEW: The Friday Edition. - Proud to be an American.

Summary

---

Tangle – PREVIEW: The Friday Edition. - Proud to be an American.

Host: Ari Weitzman (Managing Editor), with contributions from Isaac Saul
Date: February 27, 2026

---

Episode Overview

In this Friday edition of Tangle, Ari Weitzman reflects on the meaningful intersection of sports and patriotism, focusing on the recent Winter Olympics and the sincere, collective joy they inspire among Americans. He explores his own lifelong relationship with sports, the evolving complexities of patriotism, and moments when sporting achievements transcend political divisions. The episode spotlights individual athlete stories, including a notably moving discussion on figure skater Alyssa Liu, to illustrate how sports can momentarily re-unite a polarised nation.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Part 1: Sports in America

[01:39–07:12]

• A Childhood Love of Sports and Patriotism:

  • Ari recounts growing up in Pittsburgh as a sports-obsessed child, attending numerous Penn State football games and following Olympic athletes closely.
  • Quote:

    "They combine my two truest boyhood passions: Sports and America. I was a sports obsessed little Pittsburgh kid..." – Ari Weitzman [01:53]

• Early Symbols of Patriotism:

  • Notable memories include winning a trivia contest about the Steelers, idolizing American athletes, and having a strong attachment to symbols like the U.S. flag.
  • Quote:

    "In third grade, I cried in class when they showed us a video about Arlington National Cemetery that ended with a montage set to Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA." – Ari Weitzman [03:30]

• Growing Complexity:

  • As Ari matured, his simple patriotism became layered with nuance, shaped by experiences, political views, and the sometimes paradoxical relationship between love of country and criticism of governance.
  • Quote:

    "My sense of patriotism became even more complicated. Your concept of a nation can become tangled up over time with your idea of governance and then confused further with how people you disagree with exalt ideas you don't share." – Ari Weitzman [04:40]

  • Despite this, the Olympics remain a time when he freely embraces sincere, childlike love for America and sports.

---

Part 2: The Glory of Alyssa Liu and Olympic Moments

[07:12–12:50]

• Uncomplicated National Pride During the Olympics:

  • Ari observes that this year’s Winter Olympics fostered an inclusive, apolitical patriotism, saying "patriotic fervor seemed to be contagious."
  • Highlights several uplifting athlete stories, such as:
    • The first U.S. mixed doubles curling team (Corey Thiesse and Corey Dropkin) winning silver.
    • Ryan Cochran-Siegle’s silver medal in Super G, rooted in family legacy.
    • Mikaela Shiffrin’s gold in slalom after personal hardships.
    • Snoop Dogg's role as a charming U.S. ambassador at the Games.
  • Quote:

    "There's something powerful in them too. Sports offer a popular dramatic narrative for much the same reason as the best reality TV shows or even political stories do." – Ari Weitzman [08:56]

• Character and Lessons from Athletes:

  • Discusses the positive values exemplified by athletes:
    • Composure and communication from "the Coreys" (curlers)
    • Privilege of access and opportunity in Ryan Cochran-Siegle’s journey
    • Perseverance from Mikaela Shiffrin
    • Honesty and resilience from figure skater Ilya Malinin and Amber Glenn

• Figure Skater Alyssa Liu as an American Icon:

  • Ari’s highlight is Alyssa Liu’s skating—her story captures the nation’s apolitical admiration.
    • Rose quickly, retired early, then returned to competition for personal joy rather than external pressure.
    • Liu appealed across political lines: the daughter of a Chinese dissident, seen as both a symbol for the right and for the left.
    • Both sides refrained from politicizing her, embracing her as a uniquely American champion.
  • Quote:

    "Then I watched as both sides seemed to lay down their arms and feel no need to make her a token of their ideologies. Alyssa Liu is an American champion. She's happy, she's healthy, she's unique, and she's one of us." – Ari Weitzman [11:15]

    • Russian critics’ disparagement of Liu highlighted the contrast with the American style: exuberance versus rigid discipline and suffering.

• The Power of Shared National Moments:

  • Olympics presented a rare time when Americans could celebrate together, set aside political and cultural anxieties, and "cheer our best on to greatness."
  • Even the minor controversy around freestyle skier Hunter Hess quickly faded, leaving the general atmosphere one of unity.
  • Quote:

    "The whole Games offered such a welcome respite. It felt like we were all in this together as a country, sharing the same childlike love of sports in America, cheering our best on to greatness." – Ari Weitzman [10:50]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Olympics as a respite:

  "For all the worrying about our national standing leading up to the Olympics, I read nothing and saw no hand wringing about American boorishness in Milan." – Ari Weitzman [10:20]

• On Alyssa Liu's impact:

  "She returned to compete on her own terms for the pure thrill and joy of skating, and she was simply effervescent... She's just looking up at the ceiling, purely in peace in the moment. It's pretty incredible to watch." – Ari Weitzman [09:45]

• On nonpartisan unity:

  "Those critics called her out for being overweight, unbelievable, and too carefree. I mean, you've gotta be kidding me. Her Zen-like detachment offering a poignant antithesis to the Russian style... Every story needs a villain and it seemed like maybe the callous response from a few Russians provided that villain." – Ari Weitzman [11:59]

---

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–01:39: [Skipped – Advertisements and Intros]
• 01:39–07:12: Childhood passion for sports, evolving patriotism, and personal anecdotes (Ari Weitzman)
• 07:12–12:50: Analysis of the 2026 Winter Olympics, athlete stories, Alyssa Liu’s story and its national significance (Ari Weitzman)
• 12:50 on: Episode preview ends; instructions for subscribing and team credits

---

Takeaways

• The episode explores how major sporting events, particularly the Olympics, rekindle pure, unifying patriotic sentiment, providing Americans with a break from political division.
• Athlete stories are used as metaphors for broader civic values—a lens through which listeners can rediscover uncomplicated national pride.
• Alyssa Liu’s narrative stands out as a story that both sides of America can embrace without politicization, epitomizing the country’s best qualities and potential for unity.
• The host's personal journey mirrors that of many Americans whose experiences and views of patriotism have matured but still find joy and unity in the nation’s sporting moments.

---

Episode Tone & Language

• Ari Weitzman’s tone is emotional, sincere, and reflective—leaning into nostalgia, national pride, and a fondness for communal experiences around sports.
• Political matters are touched upon only as context, with an emphasis on times when American identity transcends partisanship.

---

This summary captures the heart and flow of Ari Weitzman's Olympic reflections on Tangle, offering a concise yet comprehensive guide for anyone who missed the episode.

Transcript

[Mint Mobile Announcer]

Well, the holidays have come and gone once again. But if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a [e-mail] Switch limited time

[Mint Mobile Terms Announcer]

50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy.

[Grainger Announcer]

See Terms if you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Sleep Number Announcer]

Why Choose a Sleep Number?

[Ari Weitzman]

Smart Bed Can I make my sight softer?

[Grainger Purchasing Manager Announcer]

Can I make my site firmer?

[Ari Weitzman]

Can we sleep cooler?

[Sleep Number Announcer]

Sleep Number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side your Sleep number setting. Enjoy personalized comfort for better sleep night after night. And now during our President's day sale, take 50% off our limited edition bed, plus an extra $100 off all mattresses and Saturday only at a sleep number or sleepnumber.com. From executive producer Isaac Saul.

[Ari Weitzman]

This is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking in a little bit of our take. I'm your host for TODAY managing editor Ari Weitzman, and I'm giving you a lot of my take. Today I'm going to be talking about the Winter Olympics. Some of the reflections that I had from watching it, from the athletes who competed for our country and the controversy that surrounded the Olympic men's hockey team. I don't really have anything else to talk about today other than that, so I'm going to dive right into it. This piece is written in three parts, so let's start with part one, Sports in America. Ever since I was a little kid, I've loved even numbered years because I absolutely love the Olympics. They combine my two truest boyhood passions Sports and America I was a sports obsessed little Pittsburgh kid when I was nine, I won a contest at a local video rental store ahead of Super Bowl XXX by correctly identifying the first points the Steelers ever scored in super bowl as a blocked punt SA safety. Before I even entered junior high, I'd been to several dozen Penn State football games with my dad and probably about a dozen wrestling meets. I can still name the five Pittsburgh Penguins who won gold medals with what was then called the Czech Republic at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Jamir Jagr, Marty Straka, Yuri Slager, Robert Lang and Jan Hordena, as well as each of their jersey numbers 68, 82, 71, 20 and 38 respectively. No need to fact check me, I promise. That's right. I also remember being starstruck when I got to be a ball boy for a Team USA soccer game in Hershey and I actually got to feed the legendary Mia Hamm for a throw in. As a small Editor's note here it came to my attention during fact checking that Joseph Baranic played eight games of the Penguins in 1998. I stand by my comments. I was also a very patriotic youngster. My first favorite toy was a puzzle map of the United States. In third grade, I cried in class when they showed us a video about Arlington National Cemetery that ended with a mont set to Lee Greenwood's God Bless the usa. In fourth grade, I went through a serious American flag phase. My school photo that year was me in an American flag sweater against an American flag backdrop, and I chose both of those things. A part of me still enjoys these boyhood passions today. I still coach the University of Vermont's Men's Ultimate Frisbee Team in my, I guess, spare time while in my day job with tango. I'm elbow deep every day in US Politics. But as I got older, those interests became a little more huge and complicated. With experience, I went from using athletic feats to push me to be the best version of myself as an athlete to reflecting on how these achievements can inspire me to be a better leader. My sense of patriotism became even more complicated. Your concept of a nation can become tangled up over time with your idea of governance and then confused further with how people you disagree with exalt ideas you don't share. For me, what America means and what the flag symbolizes became piled under layers and layers of complexity. I still love America. I still love the flag. But it's hard not to express that without being at least a little bit ironic. For example, the most recent picture I have of myself posing with an American flag is from 10 years ago and it was taken a photo shoot with my then puppy. And it was a little ironic to say the least. But still, this is a story about the uncomplicated, childish sincerity I feel about America and about sports and how every even numbered year I get licensed to express that sincere, boyish love I feel for both of those things without worrying if I'll come across as naive or ironic.

[Isaac Saul]

We'll be right back after this quick break.

[Grainger Announcer]

If you're an H Vac technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product fast and hassle free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat. With Grainger's Eclipse to use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Mint Mobile Announcer]

Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a [e-mail] Switch limited time

[Mint Mobile Terms Announcer]

50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for 3 month, $90 for 6 month or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy.

[Ari Weitzman]

Part 2 the Glory of Alyssa Lou I've talked about the Olympics with Isaac and Camille on suspension of the rules the past two weeks, and something that Isaac and I both loved about this year's Games was how uncomplicated patriotic fervor seemed to be contagious. Here are just a few of the storylines from the Olympics this year that were really rewarding for me to follow the first ever mixed doubles curling team of Corey Thiesse and Corey Dropkin or the Coreys won silver. Ryan Cochrane Siegel, who won silver in Super G, is the son of a gold medal winner and his family gives their name to the little hill down the road road from me in rural Vermont, where all the kids in the area learned to ski. Another skier, Michaela Shiffrin, rebounded from a traumatic crash a few years ago. The loss of her father and her mother's cancer diagnosis to win gold in slalom. Then, of course, Snoop Dogg was our country's charming, lighter than air ambassador throughout the Games, showing genuine interest in the sports and the northern Italian setting all Olympiad long. There's something fun and entertaining in these stories, but there's something powerful in them too. Sports offer a popular dramatic narrative for much the same reason as the best reality TV shows or even political stories do. These are actual people, the stakes are real, and we can learn actual, real lessons from the obstacles they had to overcome to accomplish their goals. The Coreys modeled good communication and composure under pressure. Brian Cochran Siegel was successful in part because he had pedigree, an interest and access to pursuing that interest. From a young age. Mikaela Shiffrin demonstrated the power of perseverance. The lessons we can learn from the people who lost are even more powerful. Figure skater Ilya Malinin showed how real the pressure of expectations can be, and his willingness to admit failure was honest and noble. Figure skater Amber Glenn showed an almost unthinkable amount of tenacity in her response to her own failure. Putting it all out there after defeat was almost all but assured, very nearly reaching the podium because of it than showing incredible sportsmanship and defeat. And all the while, uncomplicated opinions like these were the only ones I could find. For all the worrying about our national standing leading up to the Olympics, I read nothing and saw no hand wringing about American boorishness in Milan. Meanwhile, our athletes seemed to be putting politics aside and striving to be the best they could be and supporting their teammates doing the same. The only exception to that was the brief kerfuffle over freestyle skier Hunter Hess, saying he had mixed emotions representing the United, and that died down pretty fast. Hess described his mixed emotions by saying, the flag doesn't represent everything that happens in America, and he's proud to represent his friends and family back home. Not really super provocative stuff. The whole Games offered such a welcome respite. It felt like we were all in this together as a country, sharing the same childlike love of sports in America, cheering our best on to greatness. That apolitical love fest crescendoed after four and a half minutes from Alyssa Liu. I don't know of a single person who watched Alyssa Liu skate and wasn't in some way moved. Here was a young woman, only 20 years old, who had already experienced the full narrative arc with the sport of figure skating that most people never experience with their chosen pursuits in their whole lives. The junior champion at age 12, the first American woman to land a quadruple jump in competition, a world bronze medalist as a teenager, an Olympian, then a retiree after years of pressure and drilling and expectations before she could even legally vote. And then the comeback after she had a fun ski trip with friends, Lou decided to try skating again to see if getting back on the ice might be fun too. She returned to compete on her own terms for the pure thrill and joy of skating, and she was simply effervescent. Lou was apparent bliss embodying a magnetic, singular joy attached only to the moment. I don't know if you've seen pictures of her from competing, but they're pretty moving. You can see expressions on her face where she's just enthralled that are meant for nobody. The judges can't see her. She's just looking up at the ceiling, purely in peace in the moment. It's pretty incredible to watch in the political tribes they each rush the claimer. Lou's father is a Chinese dissident and she appealed to many on the right as well as the left as a sort of anti Eileen Gu, the Stanford grad who grew up in the US but competed for China. Lou's also a UCLA student with an alternative piercing and hairstyle, and so she appealed to many on the left but also the right as a lefty who didn't make her beliefs her identity. Then I watched as both sides seemed to lay down their arms and feel no need to make her a token of their ideologies. Alyssa Liu is an American champion. She's happy, she's healthy, she's unique, and she's one of us. She drew acclaim from the Japanese public and we loved her for that. She drew bitterness from Russian critics and we loved her for that too. Those critics called her out for being overweight, unbelievable, and too carefree. I mean, you've gotta be kidding me. Her Zen like detachment offering a poignant antithesis to the Russian style of female figure skating. Training, deprivation, suffering, sacrifice and sorry, but let's face it, not being allowed to compete because of systemic abuses. Every story needs a villain and it seemed like maybe the callous response from a few Russ provided that villain. Or maybe the professional rivals we have across the border would provide the final boss in the form of two world class hockey teams. Part three the Joke

[John Law]

hey everybody, this is John, executive producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest episode. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it. You can go to readtangle.com and sign up for a newsletter subscription or you can sign up for a podcast subscription or a bundled subscription which gets you both the podcast and the newsletter and unlocks the rest of this episode as well as ad free daily podcasts, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews and so much more. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offerings, so stay tuned. I will join you again for the daily podcast. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day y'.

[Mint Mobile Announcer]

All.

[Isaac Saul]

Peace Our Executive Editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul and our Executive Producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will Kbach and Associate Editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsey Knuth and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our [e-mail].

[Grainger Purchasing Manager Announcer]

If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why hands down, you count on Grainger for auto reordering. With on time restocks, your team will have the cut resistant gloves they need at the start of their shift and you can end your day knowing they've got safety well in hand. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Ground News Announcer]

Americans today have access to more information than ever, yet our confidence in its credibility is at an all time low, driven by an incessant demand for our attention. Advancements in tech feed us information quicker than we can verify it, and elusive algorithms determine what we even see in the first place. This is exactly what Ground News was built to solve. Ground News isn't another news publisher by combining traditional and modern media sources worldwide into one app and website. It's a news database where you can see how stories are framed. Their blindspot feed surfaces stories that are underreported so you can see every side of the story yourself. By subscribing to the Vantage Plan, you'll get unlimited access plus data like each publication's source of funding, which can heavily influence their coverage. Save 40% off at Ground News 2026. Again, that's Ground News 2026 for 40% off the unlimited Access Vantage Plan. Ground News is subscriber supported. Each subscription helps improve the product and keep the platform ad free. Thank you to our subscribers.

[Sleep Number Announcer]

Why choose a Sleep Number Smart Bed?

[Mint Mobile Terms Announcer]

Can I make my site softer?

[Grainger Purchasing Manager Announcer]

Can I make my site firmer?

[Ari Weitzman]

Can we sleep cooler?

[Sleep Number Announcer]

Sleep Number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side your Sleep Number setting. Enjoy comfort for better sleep night after night. And now during our President's day sale, take 50% off our limited edition bed plus an extra $100 off all mattresses and Saturday only at a Sleep Number store or sleepnumber. Com.