Loading summary
Transcript7 lines
- [00:00]
Isaac Saul
This summer, Instacart is bringing back your favorites from 1999 with prices from 1999. That means 90s prices on juice pouches that ought to be respected, 90s prices on box Mac and cheese and 90s prices on ham, cheese and cracker lunches. Enjoy all those throwbacks and more at throwback prices only through Instacart. $4.72 maximum discount per $10 of eligible items. Limit one offer per order. Expires September 5 while supplies last based on CPI comparison. If your dog could talk, they'd beg for Ollie. The full body tail wag, the excited little hops, the big goofy grin. That's the Ollie effect. Ollie delivers clean, fresh nutrition in five drool worthy flavors, even for the pickiest eaters. Made in US Kitchens with high quality human grade ingredients, Ollie's food contains no fillers, no preservatives, just real food. Just fill out Ollie's 32nd quiz and they'll create a customized meal plan based on your pup's weight, activity level and other health info. Do the best and that means fresh, healthy food. Head to ollie.com healthypup Tell them about your dog and use code HEALTHYPUP to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus, they offer a happiness guarantee on the first box, so if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's O L L I E.com HealthyPup and enter code HealthyPup to get 60% off your first box.
- [01:28]
Paige
Ready to level up your everyday Quince makes premium essentials without the premium price tag. From quality clothing and stylish access to travel staples and high end home goods, Quince has it all. And by partnering directly with top artisans and ethical factories, Quince delivers high quality at half the cost of similar brands. Shop elevated essentials without the markup at Quint's. Go to quints.com level up for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com levelup a record low 58% of.
- [02:11]
John Lewis
US adults now say that they are extremely 41% or very 17% proud to be an American. I've been thinking a lot these days about my pride in America. More to the point, about whether I actually love America. I tell myself that I do. And I tell other people that I do too. In my chest I want to say it and I do say it. Yes, I love America. I love my country. America is my home. And there is virtue in being proud of the place where you live. If I close my eyes and I Think about America. I first imagine all the places that I've lived, that I love, that I've called home. I think of the neighborhood I live in now in Philadelphia. The working class, side by side with the white collar newcomers. Side by side with the sports obsessed lunatics who. Who love this place with a destructive passion and an unconditional fervor. I think of New York City, where I spent nearly a decade. And the way everyone in the city seems to be in this perpetual battle together against the minor injustices around us. A subway car's broken air conditioning. A double parked Mack truck, a crowded sidewalk. I think of how we all unified, scowling at the city. A hearty laugh at the absurdities just beneath the surface. I think of the rural West Texas desert where I cut my teeth in the summers as a teenager and just finished building a house last year. I think of the bays of Cape Cod, where I learned to love cold ocean water and fresh seafood and the rocking deck of a boat as a young boy. I think of the immeasurable beauty of the Grand Tetons or the Pittsburgh winters or Southern California in the fall or Seattle in the summer. New Orleans, anytime. And the way Idaho looks like this scene out of the Land before time, just waiting for a dinosaur to lurch around the corner. There is so much that I love about America that I have no other answer than to say. Well, yes, I do love this country. I love the fresh cut grass of a minor league baseball outfield and the warm bun of a hot dog in my hand. I love big trucks and electric cars and good medicine and cheap technology. I love seeing our athletes dominate all the Olympic events. I love being able to write that the president or the governor or my local city council representative is an idiot when they've been acting like an idiot and then sleeping soundly without fear of repercussions sometimes. I love being loud and bombastic for the sake of being loud and bombastic and being accepted as such because it's America. I love redemption, and few countries celebrate redemption as America does. I love a society that insists on telling each other our grand dreams are within reach, that all you need is some hard work and a little luck and a good idea, even if it's not always true or the reality for all people. I love the convenience of traversing state lines where food and laws and culture change as if you've entered a new country. Yet we share a common language some days. I love being gluttonous and I love that this country makes it easy. I love the dumb slang these dumb American teenagers are using these days. I love a cold, shitty beer at the end of a long day of work. And America specializes in both shitty beer and long work days. Man, I love the sports and the entertainment. I love the NBA and the NFL, a crowded stadium of drunk and rowdy fans, or the way my heart rate goes up when a new, highly anticipated movie trailer is released. I hate Hollywood with a love that I can't explain. This tacky, cheesy, ritzy, awful, imaginative place that people cross oceans and countries to come to just so they can tell their story, just so we can watch it on a giant, giant screen and talk about how beautiful or boring or meaningful it really was. Do I love democracy and freedom and individual rights in the pursuit of improving and expanding it all? Hell yeah, I do. But how many of these things are unique to us? How much of this is America? What about those things that make America America but in a bad way? Do I love prisons? That voice in my head asks. Do I love obesity? Do I love gun violence? Do I love addiction and depression and loneliness and expensive health care to treat it all? Do I love ideals that people want to quote or put on placards or keep in their email signatures but can't live up to in practice? Do I love our floundering schools or the fact nearly half our country doesn't vote or the way we demand? You must love this place to live in it. If I'm honest with myself, if I'm really honest with myself, I love America for some of the same reasons other people hate it. Sometimes I like sticking my chest out and thumping it. Sometimes I feel a little tinge of pride when I read that we've threatened another country that has been threatening others with our military might. And the threat has worked. I like feeling safe and strong and big and in control. I love being important. I love that my ancestors built this important thing. I love that even if you hate America, you care about it. That we matter. That our country has influence and control and sets the standard. Even with our leaders as corruptible and spineless as they can sometimes be, I'm often glad it isn't the other people running the show. Shoot, I even love the guns. Not in schools or in the streets or in the hands of abusers. But yeah, I sure do love hearing the crack of a rifle echo across the land, watching the spoons spin or the can flop or the milk jug explode. And I love the notion of self protection and independence infused into so much second Amendment culture. Do I love America because it's mine, is that it is my love, unconditional as it is with friends or family I've known my whole life. I think about the things I hate about this country, the injustices, the partisanship, the conspiracies, the hackery, the materialism, the way simple, scared, angry people have gotten so good at climbing to the top. And I wonder, isn't that enough not to love this country? I think of how my predecessors answered the question. John Lewis, however you feel about his politics and my feelings are mixed. He loved this country even though it beat him for asking for a vote, even though it treated him like less than a man, even though it dragged him through the streets for the crime of struggling for equality. When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, he said, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last, and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide. John Lewis said that in his final piece of writing. Who am I not to love this country when John Lewis did? I remember the first few months that I lived in New York City. There was something about it that was so different from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or Jerusalem or any other big city I'd spent a lot of time in. There was the obvious. Everything was on your block. Grocery store, bank, liquor store, park, laundromat, restaurants, bars, hordes of people unlike any you'd see. And elsewhere, you could walk to it all and soak it all in. But there was something else, too. There was this way people walked with each other, this silent, unified front against the beast of the city that you could not see. Sometimes New York City just slaps you in the face, I once told a group of my friends, and everyone laughed because they knew exactly what I meant. The city, it has this personality, a being, an energy, this symphony of smells and sounds and characters and tastes and barely functioning things your taxes are paying for. Sometimes New York hands you the best night of your life, out of the blue, for no particular reason, just by virtue of you opening your heart to it. And sometimes it slaps you in the face. I often think of America as the New York City of the world. It's the best country on the planet, but it smells like piss and nothing really works how it's supposed to. As I sit here thinking about this country, its partisan rancor, rising political violence, exportation of militarism across the globe and and often not functioning Congress. I can see why so many people struggle to feel love of country right now. But the visibility of these flaws, the ability not just to discuss them openly, but also elicit change and try to fix them, that is the fundamentally American project. We are a sometimes great, sometimes loathsome, eternally imperfect nation built on a set of ideas that are so fundamentally superior to anything else civilization has come up with that they've been copied and pasted across the globe. And when you spend time in this place and when you view it with fresh eyes, it's impossible to ignore how beautifully we've built the country to fit the needs, wants and desires of so many. Ski or swim, Hard work or laziness, religious zealotry or rabid atheism. Blue or red or purple or mad and not paying attention. Cheesesteaks are the tastiest Nigerian food west of Nigeria. I once counted six languages on a 30 minute commute to work in New York City. And I once stopped at a peach stand in Mississippi and I couldn't understand the English that was being spoken to me by the American owner. This is America. And maybe this is just the story I tell myself because this is my home. But it's a story I love. It's a story of love. Do I love America? Shoot, I think so. I care for it. I want it to be good and fair and just and kind and confident and strong and welcoming and capable of brute force strength whenever the calling comes. I don't mind if it slaps me around every now and then, but I'd love if it could just function a little bit better, avoid a few more wars and allow us to share our reality and lean on wisdom and look to evidence and treasure our elderly and be forgiving and fair and nice to our children, even if just a little more than we are. I've been thinking a lot about whether I love America. And on this Independence Day, I want to. I do. I love America. I tell myself. I think I do. I think I always might. All right, that is it for today's show. Quick heads up that if you enjoyed this essay. We write and publish stuff like this all the time on our newsletter, our podcast, our YouTube channel. The best way to keep up with what we're doing is to go to readtangle.com, sign up for our newsletter. And of course, if you if you want to support our work, you can go to retangle.com membership Become a Member to keep independent media news like this going, I would very much appreciate it and I will see you for the next one. Peace Our Executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our Executive producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will Kaback and Associate Editors Hunter Caspersen, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsey Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@retangle.com Listen up. You can get the new iPhone 16e with Apple Intelligence for just $49.99 when you switch to Boost Mobile. We pulled so many all night to give you this deal and hey, stop messing with the miike. I'm just helping this catch people's attention.
- [13:41]
Paige
This is a great deal.
- [13:43]
John Lewis
Exactly. So it doesn't need all that. Fine. Head to your nearest Boost Mobile store right now. Visit your nearest Boost Mobile store for full offer details. Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. Restrictions apply.
- [13:55]
Dewey Thomas
This is Paige, the co host of Giggly Squad. I use Uber Eats for everything and I feel like people forget that you can truly order anything, especially living in New York City. It's why I love it. You can get Chinese food at any time of night, but it's not just for food. I order from CVS all the time. I'm always ordering from the grocery store. If a friend stops over, I have to order champagne. I also have this thing that whenever I travel, if I'm ever in a hotel room, I never feel like I'm missing something because I'll just Uber Eats it. The amount of times I've had to Uber Eats hair items like hairspray, deodorant, you name it, I've ordered it. On Uber Eats. You can get grocery alcohol, everyday essentials in addition to restaurants and food you love. So in other words, get almost anything With Uber Eats. Order now for alcohol you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.
- [14:55]
Paige
Quintz believes that quality products shouldn't be a luxury. Whether It's a breathable 100% European linen shirt or effortless stretch cotton pants, all of their high end top quality pieces are about half the cost of similar brands. Yes, really. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quint's gives you luxury pieces without the markup. Get the high end goods you deserve@quints.com upgrade for free shipping and 365 day returns.