Policy Punchline

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, managing partner of Andreessen Horowitz. He serves on the board of Merck. He just completed his trusteeship at Princeton. He was also chairman of the board for Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO) for six years, during which time PRINCO doubled the University’s endowment. In this episode, Peter discusses the evolving nature of venture capital investing, the relationship between VCs and their LPs (limited partners), emerging phenomenon like SPACs and cryptocurrencies, whether we’re entering another great age of secular growth for technology, and his personal journey in starting Sierra Ventures. Peter has been

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 stated in the resignation letter that he “cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” We discuss this case in this interview, as well as the state of the Navy, competition with other military powers, investment in human capital and frontier military tech, and the philosophy of war.

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 founder of Neuroco, a commercial company whose goal is to bring affordable brain signaling software to the public. He is also an honorary research fellow at Imperial College London, and a former IBM software engineer. His key interests include BCI, VR, brain signal analyses, and big data, all of which we delve into in this interview. Having been out for many years now, most people are probably familiar with virtual reality technology. However, brain-computer interfaces (also known as a neural-control interface), bridges the gap between our mind and a machine by converting brain signals into commands that can be interpreted by a computer, resulting in the desired action. The potential for this technology is profound and could be applied in myriad fields. In “Connecting Our Brains to the World”, we discuss Dr. El-Imad’s decision to transit

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 Regulated Industries (Financial Services & Insurance; Healthcare & Life Sciences; Federal, State, & Local Government; and Education). Her teams drive digital transformation across national industries and focus on inclusion, equity and access in the emerging digital economy. She is one of the leading women at Microsoft and in the technology industry. Her role at Microsoft is shaping the role that artificial intelligence and technology will play in systems like policing, education, the U.S. military, and more, especially since the U.S. government is one of Microsoft’s leading clients particularly through the use of its

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 named in honor of his father and mother. After 150 episodes, we’re finally having Mitch on the show, and everything is truly coming back in full circle here. We start the interview with an introduction to Canyon Partners and Mitch’s background. “You can’t be a great equity investor without being a solid credit analyst” – Mitch gives a detailed overview to credit investing, Canyon’s various strategies and funds, and his overarching investment philosophy. We also touch on many of the macro trends before and after Covid, the Federal Reserve’s “insurance policy” for financial markets with persistently low interest rate

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 research in the cryptocurrency space, EIP-1559, and the future of Ethereum. Prof. Roughgarden has been awarded the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the Kalai Prize in Computer Science and Game Theory, the Social Choice and Welfare Prize, the Mathematical Programming Society's Tucker Prize, and the Gödel Prize in theoretical computer science. He was an invited speaker at the 2006 International Congress of Mathematicians, the Shapley Lecturer at the 2008 World Congress of the Game Theory Society, and a Guggenheim Fellow in 2017. He has written or edited ten b

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 podcast since day one. Prof. Mian studies the connections between finance and the macroeconomy, and his book House of Debt became an instant international bestseller when it was published in 2014 and kicked off a critical line of research related to debt forgiveness and risk-sharing mechanisms. He is the first person of Pakistani origin to rank among the top 25 young economists of the world by the IMF.

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 lawyer, a law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, and a high school Latin teacher. He holds a heroic status especially amongst college economics majors, and he in fact inspired Tiger to start writing his newsletter on Substack.

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 theory and other areas in political economy. He is co-author with Tyler of Modern Principles of Economics, a widely used introductory textbook. He gave a TED talk in 2009. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. It is not an exaggeration to say that he and Tyler Cowen wield an enormous influence over the intellectual discourse today in America, and especially amongst the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

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 relating to the current political landscape and state of partisan politics. We first dive into free speech issues at colleges and universities in the United States— grappling with some of the key considerations that are informing why environments on college campuses are less encouraging for interchange and compromise between ideological groups. Ponnuru argues that the free speech issues on college campuses are not a new problem and have continued to ebb and flow based on larger political movements, pushing back against the catastrophizing done by organizations like Turning Point USA. Ponnuru also explains his though

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 University where he was awarded the John M. Olin Fellowship in Law and Economics. Tony joined Davidson Kempner in 1999. While most graduates at the time pursued opportunities in technology – given the dot-com boom – an early career in investment management enabled Tony to use both his finance and legal skills, appealing to his intellectual curiosity. Over the next two decades, Davidson Kempner grew to be a powerhouse – building out additional investment strategies while expanding its headcount and geographic footprint. Tony became a Managing Member in 2004 and co-head of the firm alongside Tom Kempner in 2018, es

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 also had senior roles on the National Security Council and in the Department of Commerce. In this interview, David talks about his personal journey from the Army to the Treasury and Bridgewater; the ten-year leadership transition that he and Ray Dalio had just completed; the challenges he experienced when managing Bridgewater over the years; macro-financial topics such as Bridgewater’s “Monetary Policy 3” framework; and his vision for a “national innovation policy” allowing for more frontier civilian technology to enter the military space. Bridgewater is a place that needs very little introduction, especially as fo

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, and more. In this interview, Princeton freshmen Ryan Vuono and Neal Reddy discuss with Professor Ikenberry the theory of liberal internationalism, lessons from the history of international orders, and the future of the liberal international framework. Considering that Professor Ikenberry is a leading proponent of the liberal internationalist school of thought within international relations, we start off the interview asking the basic questions for our listeners: what is liberal internationalism, and what does Professor Ikenberry’s vision of liberal internationalism look for today’s international climate. We move

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 Member of American Forests, the nation’s oldest conservation organization. Mr. Bohnett is the President of Whitecap Investments, a private investment firm, and special advisor to Baroda Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm. This interview was conducted by Princeton freshman Sullivan Meyer and senior Tiger Gao. We start by briefly discussing Mr. Bohnett’s educational background at Princeton and career path. He cites the interdisciplinary education he received at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs as a huge aid to his career, especially as a corporate lawyer. Going off of that experience, we

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 system, and more.

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: The Greek Crisis In Context, published in 2013, and countless articles, reports, and studies in the leading publications in energy policy and foreign affairs, including for National Bureau of Asian Research, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the National Interest. We began by exploring the role of energy in the foreign policy of previous administrations, covering the importance of fossil fuel imports in decades past and the Trump’s administration’s hope for fossil fuel exports to play a major role in the U.S. approach to Asia and Europe. As America looks to compete with China and others in the race to build renewa

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 parts. Part 1 is Rob interviewing Tiger on podcasting, the “tyranny of meritocracy,” and the fragility of today’s socio-political discourse. It was published a few days ago. This Part 2 is Tiger interviewing Rob on the drawbacks of economics academia, his current work at INET, his previous journey as a policymaker and investor, and the future of market capitalism.