Episode 2 | Life of the Mind with Keenan Pontoni

I got incredibly lucky and had a chance to jam with Keenan Pontoni, a fellow UChicago alum. We talked a lot about UChicago and if you went elsewhere… well, let’s just say we’re #happyclients and you might spend the first few minutes in envy. But this conversation went deeper than I’d have anticipated on statistics, economics, and politics.

One particularly insightful nugget: an old way of organizing campaigns is to focus around precincts but Keenan argues that precinct boundaries are no longer relevant in a world where we can micro-target to the level of the individual.

Also interesting: modeling political behavior and the not-entirely-rational voter; the changing expression of civic responsibilities (in defense of the millennial citizen); social media and new pathways of information sharing and information consumption.

And for those who might not be following the race Keenan’s currently fighting, here’s a piece from the New Yorker on it.