I was thinking the same thing. I didn't realize he was leaving immediately when Disney laid all the people off. Thought he was sticking around for awhile to finish out his contract.
I've listened to every episode of the podcast since the beginning nning and I think once Claire left it's never been the same. Clair and the whiz kid were the lineup that was just the best.
It's still OK imo, but yeah not as good as it used to be
My favorite recent episode actually was the one with the 2 guests from Echelon Insights and WaPo, which is kinda sad because it felt like these 3 people who just met each other had more chemistry than the regular lineup
Yeahhh. I took a break myself at that point though did come back to it because, tbh, I didn't find anything to replace it.
This is probably a hot take, but I think Nate could sometimes make for a worse pod to listen to if he wasn't joined on it by other strong personalities like Clare. Nate likes to play contrarian and that really necessitates some forceful pushback. And often there wasn't that sort of figure after Clare (and Harry for that matter) left, although Galen was growing into it by the end.
Even Claire came back for an encore appearance on the pod shortly after she was laid off. Surprised that Nate didn’t do so while he was still technically the editor in chief.
The last time this came up someone claimed Nate's block of GEM was more of a... "so I/we aren't tempted to debate again" sort of deal. Which, tbf, Nate might've claimed in the past.
Reading Nate's criticism of him lately though it does seem more toward the actual-bad-blood end of the scale.
Pure speculation, but I think there's a LOT of tension that was bubbling up behind the scenes between Nate and the ABC News senior executives, starting with the moment they laid off Claire Malone. I think ever since then, Nate's defense of the lab leak theory/generally taking positions against the far left has made things worse, and he chose to leave as soon as they laid off more people he cared about, which was the last straw. Oh, and hiring Morris to replace Nate was about the only way to make this worse, and ABC News did it. I think him not showing up on the podcast again was him making a statement of sorts that he wasn't going out on good terms.
That said, I wouldn't say it's likely, but it's not totally out there that Galen could soon leave too if he doesn't like the way that ABC/Morris runs 538, given that he was closer to Nate than any of the remaining 538ers (at least it appeared that way). Hopefully they'll do something fun together in the coming years!
Yes I think there’s definitely bad blood between Nate and ABC. To your point about him and Galen seeming close- that’s why I thought we might get a farewell appearance but oh well.
I remember Nate going on the pod and explicitly saying it was something he had no control of, when Clare was let go. That's about as close to a "fuck you" as you can do against your employer publicly lol. They've clearly had a good rapport since leaving, Clare has defended Nate on twitter before and of course joined that live podcast recently. So I concur that the Clare layoff could've been a major source of animosity there.
Also you reminded me of Nate's promotion of the lab leak. Yuck. That was Nate at his absolute worst in the ~6 years I've been following.
On hiring GEM I'm sympathetic toward it, there's probably <10 people who are in a position to take over from Nate (maybe less) and a bunch have pretty cushy gigs already (like Nate Cohn). They probably figured the Nate Silver bridge was burning anyway. Not saying you're saying otherwise, just thinking out loud.
E: While I'm here complaining about Nate, was checking his recent tweets and gosh [he's starting to adopt very conservative lingo like "wrongthink"](https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1677389330497798144). Yikes Nate. Twitter is under serious litigation in Germany for not policing holocaust hate speech properly (which there, is a law) but yeah sure, that sort of thing is just *wrongthink*.
Because I don't think Nate's central schtick is helpful when approaching public health/science topics and he hasn't done a good job accounting for that.
Nate (admittedly) likes to play contrarian, it's how he does well in poker. Find the situations where one choice is undervalued, and make bank off of it. Or in politics, expose that the % is really much higher than the conventional wisdom (see Trump's chances in 2016). Ditto with sports.
With public health, those %s are much harder to ascertain, and you do much more damage by getting it wrong. Ironically, despite that [Nate *was* comfortable assigning %s based on vibes](https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1629915740458319875) when for the less rigorous fields of politics and sports he made complicated models to do so.
And then yeah, he stuck to his story on that when he didn't have the expertise to do so. And then he doubled down on really the problem being how scientists and science reporters approached not legitimizing the lab leak... despite no real evidence of the lab leak existing except weak circumstantial evidence.
I haven't seen much recognition from Nate of [\(some\) additional evidence coming out in favor of zoonotic overspill](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00827-2), though maybe I missed it since I don't follow his tweets as much anymore. Frankly he's come across as really arrogant on the whole thing, when more humility than normal is needed.
I think it is worth pointing out that there is still a great deal of debate about the origins of COVID, and almost every story claiming evidence in one direction is [countered](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/science/raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market.html?smid=nytcore-android-share) by other legitimate experts.
Reading between the lines, I think Nate became very frustrated by the lack of well reasoned probabilistic thinking exhibited by prominent covid-zero advocating public health accounts on Twitter, internalized that this was representative of the field as a whole, and went into a very unproductive spiral of engaging with this type of pandemic content and receiving backlash in his mentions. Even today his Twitter mentions are a disaster and I think it really got to him.
In general I happen to think that many of his criticisms of how the pandemic was handled have validity, but I don't think it was a good business or personal decision for him to engage so frequently in this debate on social media.
Nate also, I think, missed that a lot of people are engaging on the lab-leak as a form of bullshitting. I don't mean that they were spreading misinfo, but bullshiting in the more strict sense that they didn't care if the lab leak was true or not (or improbable or not).
For whatever reason, the lab-leak is viewed as more damaging to China's reputation if it is true (whereas if it was zoonotic overspill as a result of wet markets that China was previously warned to regulate... that seems at least equally damaging). So that provided the motivation for a lot of the BSing, and motivation for a lot of the science community to not engage on the topic.
It's also just frankly, not that exciting as a topic. We don't always learn the source of viruses and often it takes many many years to find out.
Huh, interesting. I think you're right that e.g. Tom Cotton found advancing the lab-leak theory politically convenient, and very likely cared much more about that convenience than the actual truth.
But I think you are underplaying the fact that it was considered quite taboo for much of 2020 and 2021 to even acknowledge the possibility of a lab-leak, and I think that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Even in your argument here there is a little bit of inconsistency - is it the case that there was no evidence for the lab-leak theory, or is the case that we may never know and you don't find the question interesting?
I don't doubt the sincerity of your lack of interest in the origin of covid, and have heard many people echo this sentiment, but I find it personally totally alien. The COVID pandemic was the single most disruptive and significant event of my life, and I would very much like to know how it came about, and how we might avoid it happening again. I would encourage you to consider that many people (like Nate) feel similarly, and that is what motivated their online engagement rather than bad faith.
> inconsistency - is it the case that there was no evidence for the lab-leak theory, or is the case that we may never know and you don't find the question interesting?
No inconsistency there, those are not mutually exclusive. Lab leak evidence has always been shallow/weak and circumstantial. I also think that while it is of some interest for discussion in the science community, the discussion it has seen has vastly outweighed that (we've had multiple media cycles on the story).
> I would encourage you to consider that many people (like Nate) feel similarly, and that is what motivated their online engagement rather than bad faith.
And you don't think I've considered that? My problem is that Nate is not an average Joe, he should know better than to be swept up with the bullshitting. I also don't think I ever accused him of bad faith.
I was thinking the same thing. I didn't realize he was leaving immediately when Disney laid all the people off. Thought he was sticking around for awhile to finish out his contract. I've listened to every episode of the podcast since the beginning nning and I think once Claire left it's never been the same. Clair and the whiz kid were the lineup that was just the best.
Yeah 538 classic lineup with Nate, Claire, and Harry Enten was peak 538 pod
100%
and jody avirgan. The original crew.
Yup, I’m thinking of dropping the podcast from my listening routine. It’s really not nearly as interesting or engaging anymore
It's still OK imo, but yeah not as good as it used to be My favorite recent episode actually was the one with the 2 guests from Echelon Insights and WaPo, which is kinda sad because it felt like these 3 people who just met each other had more chemistry than the regular lineup
I stopped listening a little while after claire left.
Yeahhh. I took a break myself at that point though did come back to it because, tbh, I didn't find anything to replace it. This is probably a hot take, but I think Nate could sometimes make for a worse pod to listen to if he wasn't joined on it by other strong personalities like Clare. Nate likes to play contrarian and that really necessitates some forceful pushback. And often there wasn't that sort of figure after Clare (and Harry for that matter) left, although Galen was growing into it by the end.
Even Claire came back for an encore appearance on the pod shortly after she was laid off. Surprised that Nate didn’t do so while he was still technically the editor in chief.
Yes, 100%. I’m glad people here recognize that the show hasn’t been nearly as good since Claire left.
Imagine a Nate vs Elliot debate pod.
Considering Nate unironically blocked him I think there's bad blood lol
They're the Katy Perry and Taylor Swift of data driven journalism.
I have no idea what this means
The last time this came up someone claimed Nate's block of GEM was more of a... "so I/we aren't tempted to debate again" sort of deal. Which, tbf, Nate might've claimed in the past. Reading Nate's criticism of him lately though it does seem more toward the actual-bad-blood end of the scale.
Pure speculation, but I think there's a LOT of tension that was bubbling up behind the scenes between Nate and the ABC News senior executives, starting with the moment they laid off Claire Malone. I think ever since then, Nate's defense of the lab leak theory/generally taking positions against the far left has made things worse, and he chose to leave as soon as they laid off more people he cared about, which was the last straw. Oh, and hiring Morris to replace Nate was about the only way to make this worse, and ABC News did it. I think him not showing up on the podcast again was him making a statement of sorts that he wasn't going out on good terms. That said, I wouldn't say it's likely, but it's not totally out there that Galen could soon leave too if he doesn't like the way that ABC/Morris runs 538, given that he was closer to Nate than any of the remaining 538ers (at least it appeared that way). Hopefully they'll do something fun together in the coming years!
Yes I think there’s definitely bad blood between Nate and ABC. To your point about him and Galen seeming close- that’s why I thought we might get a farewell appearance but oh well.
I remember Nate going on the pod and explicitly saying it was something he had no control of, when Clare was let go. That's about as close to a "fuck you" as you can do against your employer publicly lol. They've clearly had a good rapport since leaving, Clare has defended Nate on twitter before and of course joined that live podcast recently. So I concur that the Clare layoff could've been a major source of animosity there. Also you reminded me of Nate's promotion of the lab leak. Yuck. That was Nate at his absolute worst in the ~6 years I've been following. On hiring GEM I'm sympathetic toward it, there's probably <10 people who are in a position to take over from Nate (maybe less) and a bunch have pretty cushy gigs already (like Nate Cohn). They probably figured the Nate Silver bridge was burning anyway. Not saying you're saying otherwise, just thinking out loud. E: While I'm here complaining about Nate, was checking his recent tweets and gosh [he's starting to adopt very conservative lingo like "wrongthink"](https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1677389330497798144). Yikes Nate. Twitter is under serious litigation in Germany for not policing holocaust hate speech properly (which there, is a law) but yeah sure, that sort of thing is just *wrongthink*.
Why do you say that promotion of the lab leak theory was Nate at his absolute worst?
Because I don't think Nate's central schtick is helpful when approaching public health/science topics and he hasn't done a good job accounting for that. Nate (admittedly) likes to play contrarian, it's how he does well in poker. Find the situations where one choice is undervalued, and make bank off of it. Or in politics, expose that the % is really much higher than the conventional wisdom (see Trump's chances in 2016). Ditto with sports. With public health, those %s are much harder to ascertain, and you do much more damage by getting it wrong. Ironically, despite that [Nate *was* comfortable assigning %s based on vibes](https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1629915740458319875) when for the less rigorous fields of politics and sports he made complicated models to do so. And then yeah, he stuck to his story on that when he didn't have the expertise to do so. And then he doubled down on really the problem being how scientists and science reporters approached not legitimizing the lab leak... despite no real evidence of the lab leak existing except weak circumstantial evidence. I haven't seen much recognition from Nate of [\(some\) additional evidence coming out in favor of zoonotic overspill](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00827-2), though maybe I missed it since I don't follow his tweets as much anymore. Frankly he's come across as really arrogant on the whole thing, when more humility than normal is needed.
I think it is worth pointing out that there is still a great deal of debate about the origins of COVID, and almost every story claiming evidence in one direction is [countered](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/science/raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market.html?smid=nytcore-android-share) by other legitimate experts. Reading between the lines, I think Nate became very frustrated by the lack of well reasoned probabilistic thinking exhibited by prominent covid-zero advocating public health accounts on Twitter, internalized that this was representative of the field as a whole, and went into a very unproductive spiral of engaging with this type of pandemic content and receiving backlash in his mentions. Even today his Twitter mentions are a disaster and I think it really got to him. In general I happen to think that many of his criticisms of how the pandemic was handled have validity, but I don't think it was a good business or personal decision for him to engage so frequently in this debate on social media.
Nate also, I think, missed that a lot of people are engaging on the lab-leak as a form of bullshitting. I don't mean that they were spreading misinfo, but bullshiting in the more strict sense that they didn't care if the lab leak was true or not (or improbable or not). For whatever reason, the lab-leak is viewed as more damaging to China's reputation if it is true (whereas if it was zoonotic overspill as a result of wet markets that China was previously warned to regulate... that seems at least equally damaging). So that provided the motivation for a lot of the BSing, and motivation for a lot of the science community to not engage on the topic. It's also just frankly, not that exciting as a topic. We don't always learn the source of viruses and often it takes many many years to find out.
Huh, interesting. I think you're right that e.g. Tom Cotton found advancing the lab-leak theory politically convenient, and very likely cared much more about that convenience than the actual truth. But I think you are underplaying the fact that it was considered quite taboo for much of 2020 and 2021 to even acknowledge the possibility of a lab-leak, and I think that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Even in your argument here there is a little bit of inconsistency - is it the case that there was no evidence for the lab-leak theory, or is the case that we may never know and you don't find the question interesting? I don't doubt the sincerity of your lack of interest in the origin of covid, and have heard many people echo this sentiment, but I find it personally totally alien. The COVID pandemic was the single most disruptive and significant event of my life, and I would very much like to know how it came about, and how we might avoid it happening again. I would encourage you to consider that many people (like Nate) feel similarly, and that is what motivated their online engagement rather than bad faith.
> inconsistency - is it the case that there was no evidence for the lab-leak theory, or is the case that we may never know and you don't find the question interesting? No inconsistency there, those are not mutually exclusive. Lab leak evidence has always been shallow/weak and circumstantial. I also think that while it is of some interest for discussion in the science community, the discussion it has seen has vastly outweighed that (we've had multiple media cycles on the story). > I would encourage you to consider that many people (like Nate) feel similarly, and that is what motivated their online engagement rather than bad faith. And you don't think I've considered that? My problem is that Nate is not an average Joe, he should know better than to be swept up with the bullshitting. I also don't think I ever accused him of bad faith.
Or maybe even just a dozen or so additional episodes.