Neal Desai is currently the head of HR for the State of Maryland, a job he has taken after being at the federal Office of Personnel Management. Neal has a unique front-row seat to the importance, challenges, and modern-day assaults on government workers, and our conversation is a great way
A Few Clarifications Well — maybe not quite. This idea can be a little slippery, and it’s important to have a firm grasp on it before we keep going. When you first hear about “life satisfaction” it can be easy to think to yourself, “I don’t care about being
As I attempt to metamorphose from a researcher into someone who disseminates research, I am encountering a thousand large and unexpected challenges. One of these is the difficult question of When to Share. How deep does the research need to be, to be informative? How recent, to be timely? And
This conversation was a fascinating, in-depth look from an expert, on a critical subject – which of course means that it's pretty bleak right now. Neal Desai is currently the head of HR for the State of Maryland, a job he has taken after being at the federal Office
In Part 3 of this miniseries, I talked about how we might use large volumes of volunteers and semi-structured relationship-building interventions to de-radicalize the United States. And it is true that at some point, I am firmly convinced this is necessary. As a nation, we cannot survive when vast portions
A year later Rayid invited me to Chicago, to be a member of the next generation of wizards — the people, still students then, who he hoped would pick up the work he started. Not just in elections, but in using data science for all social good, and not just for
Above (because I just figured out how to actually embed the player) is Part 2 of our conversation about having, making, and keeping social relationships. (Part 1 is here.) Enjoy! The conversation is lighthearted, and I know just tonally that makes it a shift from the written posts, but I
Part 1: Problems Chapter 1: What Does it Mean to be Most Important? Like any rocket, real or imagined, the ship that will carry us will be made of many pieces. However, the first one to build is clear. The engine of our rocket, the idea that will lift everything
[Author's Note: I know this isn't on the usual cadence, but I couldn't wait until Thursday. DOGE enters the CIA today. This is a message that needs to go out.] An enormous amount of the research I do is to answer questions that other
Don't tell anyone this, but did you know that if you ask people to be on your podcast, they'll just talk to you? This continues to blow my mind. In anticipation of another heavy subject – and the innate importance of social relationships – the next two weeks
If you're just joining, Part 1 is here, [Authors's note: I am discovering I had a lot more to say about this than I anticipated. Here, at least, I think we're out of the setup, and into the meat of it.] At the end
It is a job that I’m very proud of, and very fond of. When I accepted this job, I felt like it was one of the largest steps yet in the direction of my now twenty-year-old goal. In the years leading up to it, I had continued to look