Using a recurring “celebrity profile” section in a daily newspaper, I argue for reconsidering the historical periodization of post-independence, pre-Ba’ath Syria. While some contemporary scholarship views the 1958 formation of the United Arab Republic (UAR) as the end of a phase of (albeit unstable) parliamentary rule, I argue for the continuous presence of a developmentalist political culture that spans both the pre-UAR and Ba’ath periods. Specifically, I focus on the Damascus-based periodical "al-Ayyām", affiliated with the National Party [al-kutlah al-waṭaniyya] and, by extension, the country’s post-independence elite. In the politically precarious environment of 1962, publications like "al-Ayyām" attempted to personify a vision of technocratic, state-led development and cultural “progress” through a series of recurring interviews with prominent public figures. The politicians, administrators, scholars, and entertainers profiled in the resulting “Chatter on the Go” (dardasha ʼala al-māshī) section serve as more than an attempt to humanize a system whose chronic instability had become unavoidably apparent. Though the interviews follow a similar lighthearted format, each subject provides a unique perspective on the effort to embody a program of state-led, Western aligned societal “development”. These profiles not only serve as a unique testament to a conjunctural moment at which this regime's future remained quite uncertain- they speak to an emerging method of public engagement and mobilization that the Ba’ath Party would adapt to its advantage in the years to come. While contemporary historiography of this period describes an increasingly marginalized Syrian elite rendered incapable of projecting its own legitimacy through either advocacy or coercion, periodicals from over a year after the UAR’s dissolution show the ability of popular media to define and humanize an aura of stability, as well as the resilience of a developmentalist narrative that would transcend this particular political era. The lighthearted interviews of “Chatter on the Go”, and the recurring ethos of state-led popular mobilization and technocratic development that they reflect, testify to a more gradual evolution from what some have termed the “democratic” 1950s to the more explicitly authoritarian order that would follow.