Defusing a crisis after an ambassador hinted at a preemptive strike on Russia, delivering demarches in multiple languages, and surviving the frantic evacuation of the Kabul embassy with John Johnson, a retired diplomat who spent more than twenty years in the US Foreign Service.
Landing the Perseverance rover on Mars, working in clean rooms to minimize the microbial bug count, and slogging through hundreds of engineering trade-offs with Swati Mohan, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Wiring a neighborhood back to life after a tornado, coveting the work of helicopter linemen in Faraday suits, and surviving the collapse of a rotten utility pole with Elden Rivas, a journeyman lineman in Houston, Texas.
Tinkering with the recipe for gingerbread cake until it’s right, adjusting to the variability of local grains, and cherishing the quiet mornings when the sun fills the bakery windows with Sophie Williams, a baker in Bellingham, Washington.
Suspending the licenses of unsafe restaurant operators, hunting down the origins of foodborne illness outbreaks, and eliciting truthful answers from anxious managers with Justin Dwyer, a health inspector in Peoria, Illinois.
Negotiating cases in which neither spouse wants custody of the cat, setting clients’ expectations about what’s legally possible (versus what feels “right”), and finding hope in people’s ability to bounce back from dark times with Lucy Stewart-Gould, a divorce lawyer in London.
View all the sessions from Neuropaz 2026—an online event exploring the latest work and thinking at the intersection of behavioral science and peace and conflict. Plus, access additional resources from all of our speakers.
On Friday, February 6, join us for an online event exploring the latest work and thinking at the intersection of behavioral science and peace and conflict.
A half century of research on how people make decisions has shown that rational choice theory fails to describe how people do choose. Nevertheless, it has remained at the center of things, as the normative answer to questions about how people should choose.
The current political moment makes equity-grounded research harder. But that’s precisely the reason we need to keep doing it.
