Politics without the spin - or the boring
In a media landscape where left shouts at right and everyone calls it journalism, Isaac Saul decided to do something genuinely radical: explain both sides without a smirk. He built a newsletter. He called it Tangle. And somehow, half a million people said yes.
Tangle is not "he said, she said" mush. It is not a lazy "on the other hand" column. It is, four days a week, a precise dissection of the biggest argument in American politics - the strongest case from the left, the strongest case from the right, and then Saul's own clearly labeled take, offered with the transparency of someone who knows the difference between fairness and cowardice.
Ninety-five percent of his readers - across party lines - say they trust it. AllSides, Ad Fontes Media, and Media Bias Fact Check all rate it center bias. Three media watchdogs. Zero disagreement. That is rarer than a bipartisan infrastructure bill actually passing.
Transparency matters more than neutrality.
- Isaac SaulHe did not inherit a media empire. He started a newsletter in July 2019 with a name he later had to change. He called it "The Shuffle" - which, to be fair, sounds like a bad card trick - and eventually renamed it Tangle. He left his newspaper editor job in April 2021 to go full-time on a bet that readers were tired of being told what to think by publications that had already decided what they thought.
He was right. Within a few years, Tangle crossed 325,000 subscribers and $2.25 million in annual revenue, entirely without advertising. By 2025, it had cleared 500,000 subscribers in over 60 countries. The model: reader-supported, editorially independent, structurally committed to presenting arguments that make people uncomfortable, regardless of where they land politically.
How Tangle Works
Most political media picks a team and plays for it. Tangle does something structurally different - it presents the best arguments from across the political spectrum, then lets the founder weigh in with full transparency about his own perspective. Not hiding the human behind the masthead. Putting them front and center.
Tangle Readership by Political Identity
The format matters. Each edition identifies one major political question, presents the strongest arguments from the left and right - not strawmen, not the weakest version of opposing views - and then offers Saul's own "My Take," a labeled personal perspective that readers know is one person's honest read, not the voice of God or the consensus of Twitter.
Saul built a newsroom with actual ideological diversity. When a conservative intern from Tennessee reviewed Tangle's abortion coverage, she flagged weak arguments and predicted exactly how conservative readers would misread certain passages. That feedback made the coverage stronger. Most newsrooms do not do this - not because they can't, but because they are not trying to reach people who disagree with them.
Bucks County, Pennsylvania - where arguments come free
Isaac Saul grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania - one of the most politically divided counties in the country. Swing district energy. Competing yard signs on the same block. Dinner tables where people actually disagree. For most people, this would be uncomfortable. For Saul, it was a graduate-level seminar in why people believe what they believe.
He went to Pennsbury High School, got into journalism as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh where he earned a degree in nonfiction writing, and after graduation spent five months studying in a yeshiva in Jerusalem. Not an obvious path to political media - but it speaks to a genuine curiosity about how different communities see the world.
By 2016, Yahoo! News had named him one of 16 people who shaped that year's election. After 2020, he spent the first week after the vote debunking over 32 different election fraud conspiracy theories - one at a time, sourced, argued, checked. It was not a career move. It was a compulsion.
Wait, he's also a national frisbee champion?
Multiple Pennsylvania state titles at Pennsbury High. Two national championships at University of Pittsburgh. One national championship with NYC club team Pride of New York (PoNY). The guy who believes everyone deserves a fair hearing also believes in winning.
He is married to Phoebe, who completed her first year of law school while pregnant. In January 2025, they welcomed their son, Omri Fuller-Saul. True to form, Saul wrote publicly about how fatherhood changed his views on healthcare, family leave, and abortion - modeling the kind of intellectual evolution he asks readers to practice every day.
Fair is not the same as boring
Saul has a clear theory about what is wrong with American political media. It is not bias, exactly. It is that most outlets have already decided who they are talking to, and are mostly just reinforcing those readers' existing views. That feels safe. It is actually a slow-motion collapse of public trust.
Most people don't have a great grasp - or aren't being exposed to - the really strong arguments that exist across the political spectrum.
- Isaac SaulHe is meticulous about language - not in a bureaucratic way, but in a "words signal tribal membership and I am trying to reach people from all tribes" way. "Undocumented immigrant" versus "illegal immigrant." "Pro-life" versus "anti-abortion." Each phrase is a flag. Saul thinks carefully about which flag to fly and when.
He distinguishes between neutral and fair. Neutral, he argues, is both impossible and uninteresting - every editorial decision, every word choice, every story selected for the front page is a judgment call. Fair is something different: it is a commitment to presenting genuine arguments rather than caricatures, and to being honest about your own perspective rather than pretending you don't have one.
His TED Talk - delivered at TED2024 in Vancouver in April 2024 - laid out three concrete ideas for communicating across political divides. Not theoretical frameworks. Not "be nicer to people you disagree with." Actual tactical suggestions drawn from years of building a media company that both sides of the aisle read.
The small moments that define a big career
A Tangle newsletter helped save an actual marriage. Dick and Emily Newton - a politically divided couple - found common ground through Tangle's balanced coverage. This American Life told their story in 2024. The episode nearly doubled Tangle's subscriber count overnight. Saul did not plan this. He just kept writing both sides of the argument.
After graduating from Pitt, Saul spent five months studying in a yeshiva in Jerusalem. A detour that made no obvious career sense and probably made him a better journalist than any newsroom internship. He has since reported from 15+ countries on five continents. The world looks different when you have actually been in it.
In the first seven days after the 2020 election, Saul debunked 32 different election fraud conspiracy theories. One by one. Sourced and argued. Not because he was assigned it. Because it needed doing. Yahoo! News had already named him one of 16 people who shaped the 2016 election. He knew the stakes.
Multiple state championships in high school. Two national championships at college. One national title with Pride of New York. A founder who wins frisbee championships at every level of competition also, it turns out, wins at the long game of building a media company. Pattern recognition is a real thing.
What he has actually built
- Founded Tangle - 500,000+ subscribers in 60+ countries, $2.25M+ annual revenue, zero advertising
- Won two Shorty Awards in 2024: News & Media category winner and Audience Award
- Delivered TED Talk at TED2024, Vancouver - "Three Ideas for Communicating Across the Political Divide"
- Featured in This American Life (2024) - the episode that nearly doubled Tangle's subscriber base
- Tangle independently rated center bias by AllSides, Ad Fontes Media, AND Media Bias Fact Check simultaneously
- Named by Yahoo! News as one of 16 people who shaped the 2016 U.S. election
- Named by Forbes among 1,000 entrepreneurs redefining the American dream (2020)
- Debunked 32+ election fraud conspiracy theories in the week following the 2020 election
- Spoke at Harvard's Nieman Fellowship class on transparency, word choice, and ideological diversity
- National ultimate frisbee champion at college level (University of Pittsburgh) and club level (Pride of New York)
- Contributed to CNN, TIME, HuffPost, Vox, New York Daily News, Daily Mail, Independent Journal Review
Career timeline
What he is actually trying to do
Isaac Saul is not trying to fix politics. He is trying to fix the conversation about politics. Those are different problems, and confusing them is how a lot of well-meaning media projects go sideways. His goal is not consensus. It is comprehension - helping readers genuinely understand the strongest version of the argument they disagree with.
The evidence suggests it is working. Tangle readers write in from both sides of the aisle to say it changed how they understand the other side. A This American Life producer found a couple whose marriage Tangle helped save. Half a million people pay - with money or attention - to read something that deliberately makes them think about ideas they might find uncomfortable.
In 2025, with a newborn son and a wife in law school, Saul wrote about how fatherhood changed his views. Not performing vulnerability. Actually sharing an evolving perspective on healthcare costs, parental leave policy, and abortion - a writer modeling the intellectual honesty he has been asking of his readers since 2019.
What truly neutral outlets are doing is fundamentally uninteresting and also impossible.
- Isaac SaulHe grew up in a county where neighbors disagree at the voting booth and still wave from the driveway. He believes the conversation is possible. He has spent six years building the infrastructure to prove it. Half a million subscribers and a This American Life episode about a saved marriage suggest he might be onto something.