Everything we got wrong (and right) in 2023

Welcome to a new era in Tangle! Today will be the first episode with my Friday co-host, our Managing Editor, Ari Weitzman. We are working towards releasing Friday subscriber only content in the near future and this will be one of our new offerings. We'll be presenting the a few episodes for free.

In an attempt at the virtue of accountability, I like to dedicate the first Friday edition of every new year to grading some of my previous writing. The way this process works is simple: About two months ago, I told my team to start looking through our archives with a retrospective lens, reading the things we published, and flagging instances where we made authoritative comments or outright predictions. I also sorted through reader criticisms and feedback, and suggestions about articles to revisit.

Then, our team went back as a group to evaluate that writing, and settled on a grade for how we did.

Of course, we published over 200 newsletters last year, so we can't grade every single one. Instead, we tried to focus on newsletters tied to the biggest stories of 2023 — the stories that garnered the most public attention and reader feedback. I'm going to share with you key excerpts from my writing and my overarching take, and then a brief "reflection" section along with a grade on the A-to-F scale.

At the end, I'll do some rapid-fire grading and also revisit the 19 predictions we published in 2021.

You can find our 2022 review here and our 2021 review here.

You can also check out our latest YouTube video about misinformation and fake news that has spread like wildfire in the three months since Hamas’s attack on Israel and the subsequent fighting in Gaza here.

Today’s clickables: Introducing new co-host Ari Weitzman! (0:40), Introduction of the 2023 recap (14:34), McCarthy elected as Speaker (17:16), Chinese spy balloon (21:55), Trump's New York indictment (26:15), Debt ceiling deal (29:46), Biden announces 2024 run (35:33), Should Feinstein retire (41:43), RFK runs (42:56), DeSantis runs (49:37), Inflation coverage (56:52), Biden's border plan (60:57), Israel piece (64:43), Rapid fire (76:20), GPA (82:18), 19 predictions (83:53), The Airing of Grievances (86:20)

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Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. 

Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.

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