Policy Punchline

Dr. Jean Hebert is a professor at the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is also a professor in the department of genetics, and has conducted research that has been published in renowned journals such as Science. His current scope of research in the Hebert Lab includes devising methods of cell replacement for the adult neocortex after cell...

Dr. Anders Sandberg is a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. He is a senior research fellow on the ERC UnPrEDICT Programme, and a research associate to the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. He holds a PhD in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, and his research focuses on exis...

Peter Wendell is the founder of Sierra Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has invested more than $2 billion over the past 35 years in a wide variety of successful technology companies. Peter has taught more than 2,000 Stanford MBAs over the past 30 years, specifically the very popular course Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Scott Kupor, managi...

Richard V. Spencer served as the 76th United States Secretary of the Navy from 2017 to 2019. He also briefly served as Acting Secretary of Defense and Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense in 2019. Sec. Spencer’s term as the Navy Secretary was terminated on November 24, 2019, when Secretary of Defense Mark Esper requested his resignation over his handling of the Eddie Gallagher case. Sec. Spencer sta...

Dr. Jamil El-Imad is the CEO of The Brain Forum, a neuroscience, brain-computer interface (BCI), and virtual reality (VR) research foundation in Switzerland, as well as the co-founder of NeuroPro, a Swiss-based Digital Health Solutions company that leverage the latest advances in computer science and digital technology to create new and improved tools that support researchers, clinicians, and inno...

Toni Townes-Whitley graduated from Princeton University in 1985 with a B.A. in Public Policy and Economics. She then went to the peace corps for three years in Gabon. With a non-tech background, she went on to become the President of the IT and business consulting services firm CGI Federal and presently the President of US Regulated Industries at Microsoft. She leads Microsoft's U.S. sales for Reg...

Mitch Julis is the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Canyon Partners, one of the largest and best-performing multi-strategy hedge funds in the world. If you listen to the end of our interviews or visit our website, you’ll see that Policy Punchline is generously funded by the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance (JRCPPF) at Princeton University. The Center was created by Mr. Julis and...

Paul G. Haaga Jr. is the former acting CEO of NPR, the former chairman and director of Capital Research and Management Company, and the Chairperson of the Facebook Oversight Board Trust. In this episode, we welcome back Mr. Haaga Jr. to Policy Punchline to discuss Facebook's recent decision on deplatforming former U.S. President Donald J. Trump.

Paul G. Haaga Jr. is the former acting CEO of NPR, the former chairman and director of Capital Research and Management Company, and the Chairperson of the Facebook Oversight Board Trust.

Tim Roughgarden is a Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University and a winner of the Gödel Prize, which is often considered as “the Nobel Prize of theoretical computer science.” His research interests include the many connections between computer science and economics, as well as the design, analysis, applications, and limitations of algorithms. We’ll also talk about his most recent resea...

My guest today is someone of great personal significance to me. He is my senior thesis advisor and one of the most important mentors in my student career. Atif Mian is the John H. Laporte, Jr. Class of 1967 Professor of Economics, Public Policy and Finance at Princeton University, and the Director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance, which has graciously supported this pod...

Matt Levine writes the popular daily newsletter “Money Stuff” on Bloomberg Opinion that has over 150,000 subscribers and a “cult-like” following on Wall Street and beyond. He is widely regarded as one of the most iconic, witty, and sophisticated financial writers of our age. Before Bloomberg, Matt was an editor of Dealbreaker, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, a mergers and acquisitions lawye...

Alex Tabarrok is Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center and a professor of economics at George Mason University. Along with Tyler Cowen, he is the co-author of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and co-founder of Marginal Revolution University. He is the author of numerous academic papers in the fields of law and economics, criminology, regulatory policy, voting th...

Ramesh Ponnuru is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, senior editor with the National Review, and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. A leading conservative thinker and pundit, Ramesh has made numerous appearances on shows like Meet the Press and Face the Nation. He is also an alumnus of Princeton, earning a degree in History. In the interview, we discuss a variety of issues rel...

Anthony (Tony) Yoseloff is the Executive Managing Member and Chief Investment Officer of Davidson Kempner Capital Management, one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers with more than $37 billion in assets under management. Tony graduated from Princeton University in 1996 with a B.A. from the School of Public and International Affairs. He then received a JD and MBA from Columbia Univers...

David McCormick is the CEO of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund with over $140 billion in assets under management. David joined Bridgewater in 2009 and was President and Co-CEO before becoming CEO in 2020. Prior to Bridgewater, he was the US Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs in the George W. Bush Administration during the 2008 global financial crisis, and he a...

Professor Ikenberry is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the Department of Politics and the School of Public and International Affairs. He is one of the most notable scholars in the entire field of international relations, with an expansive body of work spanning countless books, journals, essays, working at think tanks, advisory groups...

William Bohnett is the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. He served from 2009-2018 as a member of the National Board of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum and research complex. Bill sits on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Council on Competitiveness, a non-partisan NGO working on national competitiveness issues, and is a Board Memb...

Matt Weinberg is an assistant professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. His primary research interest is in Algorithmic Mechanism Design: auction design, cryptocurrency, voting systems, and more. In this interview, Prof. Weinberg provides both a detailed overview of mechanism design and its philosophical implications, and he discusses his latest research in the mechanism design of cry...

Ben Hunt is the creator of Epsilon Theory and inspiration behind Second Foundation Partners, which he co-founded with Rusty Guinn in June 2018.

Nikos Tsafos is interim director and senior fellow of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He’s researched, written, advised, and consulted extensively on a range of fascinating topics, including natural gas, the geopolitics of energy, the future of mobility, and the global energy transition. He is the author of Beyond Debt: T...

Our host Tiger recently received his first ever podcast interview as a guest on the Economics & Beyond podcast hosted by Rob Johnson, President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). This is certainly a great honor for him, as Rob’s guests typically range from Nobel Laureates to accomplished public intellectuals. They talked for 3.5 hours, and the interview is being published in two pa...

Our host Tiger recently received his first ever podcast interview as a guest on the Economics & Beyond podcast hosted by Rob Johnson, President of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). This is certainly a great honor for him, as Rob’s guests typically range from Nobel Laureates to accomplished public intellectuals. They talked for 3.5 hours, and the interview is being published in two pa...

Nolan McCarty is the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs and Interim Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He is the co-author of several books, including Political Bubbles: Financial Crises and the Failure of American Democracy and Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches. His most recent book, Polarization: What Everyone Needs t...

Jeremy Adelman is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University and the Director of the Global History Lab, which strives to teach students internationally how to create new global narratives even across divides. Recently, the Global History Lab has brought displaced persons and refugees into its network. His academic focus is global, economic, and Latin American history. His...