FiveThirtyEight Changed My Life
A short eulogy
The feeling of associating a benign sound with a memory is called synesthesia. The stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to an involuntary activation of a second, unrelated cognitive pathway. Synesthesia is more than memory recollection—it’s a feeling of being inside the memory. Even with the magic of modern neuroscience, we still know little about how synesthesia develops or why it exists at all. Here, beyond the edge of science, lies a layer of interconnected memories that require such precise activation to activate that it feels supernatural.
When I hear the opening jingle of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast, synesthesia quickly takes hold. It’s 2018, and I’m watching a post-midterm recap with Galen Druke, Micah Cohen, and Nate Silver. It’s early 2020, and I’m looking out at the bleak New Hampshire countryside on the way to a Joe Biden rally as Clare Malone and Nate Silver debate whether the former Vice President had any life left in the race. I could point to a thousand of these memories. I would listen religiously to those opening chimes through the end. I would listen in school, at the gym, while driving, while walking. It felt like as my interest in politics and writing blossomed, FiveThirtyEight was there to challenge me to learn a little bit more.
I remember spending class after class in middle school fiddling with the FiveThirtyEight forecasts—a trove of data that I could examine endlessly. It was here that I discovered my love for data. Data explained the world in a way I never could. Political forecasting became more than two formerly important people yelling on an MSNBC show. It was real. You could see it. Data was unambiguous in its credibility but humble in its certainty.
I was always jealous of how the FiveThirtyEight team wove data into its articles. It felt so natural. So complete. My first site, The Senatorial, would become a well-meaning copycat of the FiveThirtyEight model. I remember fervently researching how I could get my WordPress to incorporate the live chat model used by FiveThirtyEight (spoiler: you could not). I learned Photoshop to mimic the covers that FiveThirtyEight used for their articles. I would print out pieces from the site and read them again, and again, and again, to learn how they wrote so adroitly. I remember debating whether I, a then fourteen-year-old, could apply for the summer internship in New York (a city I do not live in or near).
I always question why people say things “changed their life.” It never made sense to me. So many things change our lives—why mention it? The banana I ate for breakfast changed my life, so did the walk from my house to school. Even supposedly life-changing events felt to me that they were always likely to happen. It’s life-changing to fall in love, but the act of falling in love is a certainty for most people. If a thing can be uniform, how can it be unique? I have come to admit that I am, partially, incorrect.
Some things in life are truly rare and life-changing. You meet people who you have never met before, will never meet again, and who will change you fundamentally. You will be offered an opportunity that will truly, earnestly, and wholeheartedly change your life. They exist one moment and not the next. Their replacements may be similar, but they will never feel the same. So life goes on—you take or do not take the opportunity, you love and hate, and the life that could have been or did exist is quietly imprinted on your subconscious.
There will never be another FiveThirtyEight. Not in the way it existed, in the time it grew to prominence, or in the content it provided. There will be others, sure, who try and recreate the magic that FiveThirtyEight had. Most will fail, a few will get close, but none will succeed in capturing “it.” That “it” changed my life in a foundational way. “It” made me believe in the magic of writing. I would not write today if FiveThirtyEight had not existed. The fact that it will no longer exist for those younger than me fills me with tremendous grief.
It feels odd to be so emotional about a website. FiveThirtyEight was more than just a page on the internet, though. It was a collection of the rarest type of person: brilliant, humble, and convivial. They made FiveThirtyEight what it was. Every podcast recorded, every article written, and every model released was the work of a team of people who I will likely never meet but who I feel so effusively connected to. My love for writing is a result of their love for writing. I owe so much to this team, and I will never get to fully repay them for what they gave to my thirteen-year-old self.
The most amazing thing about synesthesia to me is its permanence. You can hear a sound and be cognitively transported into a bygone world. Decades can pass, and the opening chords of a song can rapaciously captivate your consciousness into one specific memory. FiveThirtyEight will never produce another piece of content, but its impact on me can never be erased. I will always be transported to that thirteen-year-old when I hear that opening jingle. My writing will always have a fox-sized shadow over it, pushing me to refine, refine, refine. I could not be more grateful.
P.S. - A special thank you to Nathaniel Rakich who has been so generous with his time with me.