HoS: Nate Silver

Like so many people, I was shocked to see Disney separate Nate Silver from his famous website, 538. How could this happen? What’s next for Nate, post-538? We get into it.

Our jumping off point is Nate’s new Substack, Silver Bulletin, which I thoroughly enjoy. That site covers topics ranging from poker to politics and, of course, pro sports. So we talk about that, plus discuss what the “Indigo Blob” is.

This podcast outline, put together by the astute Sam Schuette, is of a conversation that includes but is not limited to the following:

1. Silver’s memorable Poker tournament experience

   1. How he deduced people by observing their mannerisms

   2. Famous YouTube video of winning a massive bluff

2. How sports parallel poker

   1. Using stereotypes about yourself to your advantage

   2. Why Ed Reed intercepting Peyton Manning is like a poker player predicting an opponent’s next move

3. Why shouldn’t there be an ideological purity test for pollsters?

   1. Separate the art (polling) from the artist (political lean of pollster)

4. Activism as journalism and the PR-ification of everything

   1. Writers using moral authority to tell audience what to think about Taylor Swift’s boyfriend

   2. Has it been successful for the Democrats to make their journalism more progressive?

   3. Advancing political arguments via buzzwords like “the science” and “misinformation”

5. The semantics and effects of wokeness

   1. Has “woke” been overused? Is it time for a new name?

   2. How wokeness created a conservative equilibrium (Bud Light boycotts)

6. Terrible Twitter before Elon vs terrible Twitter with Elon

   1. The increased equilibrium of current Twitter

   2. Which arguments are safe to make on Twitter when questioning institutional consensus gets framed as right wing?

7. The importance of political parties for normies

8. Why Nate hasn’t given up politics yet

   1. Importance and uncertainty of the 2024 election

   2. Aligning what he does with his interests

9. Reflecting on FiveThirtyEight

   1. Its missed potential for a subscription opportunity

   2. What ended his run there?

   3. His issues and differences with the new guy running 538, G. Elliott Morris

10. Silver’s Sloan panel with Bill James

    1. James’ talent for making crazy takes seem plausible

    2. Why Bill James thinks the NBA has the worst athletes

11. The Pac-12’s dissolution to the Pac-4

    1. Why sports are so much bigger in the Midwest and South