My new audiobook, Blockers, is out now! Get the audiobook now exclusively at blockers.fm. And stay tuned for an upcoming Blockers companion series right here on Against the Rules.

In Washington, a blocker became the worst thing you could be. The directive was to find the blockers and get rid of them. And I found six of them. People who devoted their lives to public service, who believed their work mattered, until they were told they no longer belonged.

Blockers tells the story of the people who kept our most sensitive data secure, helped prevent wildfires, and uncovered life-saving research, and who got in the way of a slash-and-burn agenda inside the executive branch.

What fascinated me about it all wasn't politics. It was what happens when a society decides it no longer values the people doing work it depends on.