title: Extracting dictionary values from a pandas dataframe
body: <p>I need to extra a features from a dataset I imported from a .json file. </p>
  
  <p>This is what it looks like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>f1 = pd.read_json('https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansymo/msr2013-bug_dataset/master/data/v02/eclipse/short_desc.json')
  
  print(f1.head())
  
  
                                                 short_desc
  1       [{'when': 1002742486, 'what': 'Usability issue...
  10      [{'when': 1002742495, 'what': 'API - VCM event...
  100     [{'when': 1002742586, 'what': 'Would like a wa...
  10000   [{'when': 1014113227, 'what': 'getter/setter c...
  100001  [{'when': 1118743999, 'what': 'Create Help Ind...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In essence, I need to take 'short_desc' as the column name, and populate it with the string values directly below it: 'Usability issue...</p>
  
  <p>So far, I've tried the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>f1['desc'] = pd.DataFrame([x for x in f1['short_desc']])
  
  Wrong number of items passed 19, placement implies 1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there an easy way to accomplish this without the use of loops? Could someone point this newbie in the right direction?</p>