About R3ciprocity: Research Life, Innovation, Business Growth, & Strive Towards Being Happy
Professor David Maslach talks about graduate school, research, science, Innovation, and entrepreneurship. The R3ciprocity project is my way to give back as much as I possibly can. I seek to provide insights and tools to change how we understand science, and make it more democratic.
High school never really ends.
I know that sounds ridiculous, but watch almost any coming-of-age high school movie and you see something real. At some point, people realize there are groups. Jocks. Nerds. Gamers. Outcasts. Popular kids. Quiet kids. Studious kids. People with different interests, different information, different tastes, and different views of the world.
Social class is defined as a set of groups that shape what people value, what they see, who they know, and what choices feel possible to them.
I felt this very early.
I was always a nerdy kid. I did not really fit cleanly into any one group. Toward the end of high school, I became more studious because I saw education as a path to economic prosperity. But even then, I could see that moving between groups was hard.
Not just because people were mean.
But because each group carried different information.
Different beliefs.
Different habits.
Different signals about what mattered.
That is the part I think we often miss.
A lot of how we teach economics, business, and strategy assumes people are making clean choices. They see options. They weigh costs and benefits. They choose.
But real life is messier than that.
People do not just choose from all possible options.
They choose from the options their social world makes visible.
That is why high school is such a powerful example. It is one of the first places where many of us see status, belonging, class, identity, and opportunity all tangled together.
And the uncomfortable part is this:
Business schools often teach decision-making as if people are floating above society.
But people are not floating.
They are embedded in groups.
Families.
Friendships.
Schools.
Cultures.
Neighborhoods.
Signals.
Stories.
That does not mean economics is wrong.
It means our simple models often miss the social world that makes some choices feel normal and other choices feel impossible.
If we want people to make better life decisions, we need to stop pretending everyone sees the same choice set.
They do not.
Sometimes the biggest advantage in life is not intelligence.
It is being around people who make better futures seem possible.
8 Oct 2026
How To Keep Building When People Doubt You
Most lives change in boring ways.
Not in one big breakthrough.
Not in one perfect moment.
Just one more day with quiet confidence.
One more step forward.
One more time getting back up and trying again.
Maybe you are finishing school and trying to find a job.
Maybe you are building a business.
Maybe you are trying to build a family.
Maybe you are trying to build anything at all.
I know how crazy-making that feels.
It can feel like nothing is moving.
It can feel like everybody else has a map and you do not.
I was the person who got picked last.
I was not the athletic one.
I was not the one everybody looked at and thought, this person is going to do something remarkable.
A lot of things did not come easy to me.
And then at some point I realized something simple.
Nothing was going to change unless I got back up and did one more day.
That is still the lesson.
There is very little you can change in one moment.
But you can change your direction in one moment.
One more application.
One more hour.
One more video.
One more embarrassing step into the unknown.
One more try when the odds are low and most people do not care.
Most people are not going to believe in you.
Some will doubt you.
Some will laugh.
Some will tell you it was easy for you.
Bless your heart.
You were not there for the journey.
The journey is the point.
You move the needle by repeating what matters long enough for your life to change.
Not all at once.
Not with magic.
Just one more day.
One more step.
One more try.
That is how unbelievable things get built.
6 Oct 2026
Why Academic Entrepreneurs Stop Believing Words
Most people talk. Very few help.
One of the biggest lessons I have learned as an academic entrepreneur, innovator, and builder of the R3ciprocity platform is this: do not listen to what people say. Watch what they do. I thought research uncertainty, PhD depression, scholar loneliness, and the broken research game were obvious problems people would want to solve. I thought the academic community, funding agencies, and grant systems would want to move the needle. They did not.
People talk about research problems, academic culture, innovation, community, crowdsourcing, and change. But when it comes time to fund, build, pay, join, or help, almost nobody shows up. That is the real lesson. Human behavior matters more than academic talk. Actions matter more than words.
So if you are building something real, expect repetition. Expect embarrassment. Expect rejection. Expect to do most of it yourself. The only strategy I believe in now is repetition and leverage. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Then find small ways to leverage the repetition. That is how real change starts.
Reach and audience
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Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
9 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 61 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
95
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
68
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Who hosts R3ciprocity: Research Life, Innovation, Business Growth, & Strive Towards Being Happy?
R3ciprocity and Dave Maslach and David Maslach host the show. Published by David Maslach.
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