Policy Punchline

Dr. Ethan Nadelmann is one of the foremost experts on drug policy in the US and the world. Originally from New York City, he received his BA, JD, and PhD from Harvard, then his master’s degree in international relations from the London School of Economics. After teaching politics and public affairs at Princeton University from 1987 to 1994, he went on to found and direct the Lindesmith Center and the Drug Policy Alliance, and through them, has advocated for drug policy reform for almost thirty years.

From pushing for marijuana legalization to fighting against the War on Drugs and policies like civil asset forfeiture, his work has impacted countless people both in the US and around the world. Today, he’s also the co-host of the boundary-pushing podcast PSYCHOACTIVE. In this interview, Ryan and Eliot talk to Dr. Nadelmann about lessons he’s learned from his career, possible solutions to current drug issues, and much more.

Professor Christakis is the Sterling Professor of Natural and Social Science at Yale University. His research is focused on understanding social networks through their biological and evolutionary determinants, which encompasses studying a broad range of topics from epidemiology and contagion to human behavior and psychology. Professor Christakis has been recognized for his contributions to the field of sociology, was named a member of the Time 100, and has published many articles and several renowned books relating to epidemiology and evolutionary genetics. In addition to his research, Professor Christakis has practiced medicine in the field of palliative care for many years and continues to advocate for academic freedom and free speech on college campuses.

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Host: Neal Reddy

Editor: Marko Petrovic

Lord Mervyn King is a professor of economics and law at the NYU Stern School of Business and the School of Law, and the former governor of the Bank of England. He served as Governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of its Monetary Policy Committee from 2003 to 2013. Lord King was knighted (GBE) in 2011, made a life peer in 2013, and appointed by the Queen a Knight of the Garter in 2014.

Lord King’s most recent book, Radical Uncertainty, co-authored with John Kay, examines rationality, decision making under uncertainty, and the flaws with modern economic thinking. The book offers a powerful critique of the current state of economic scholarship and policymaking, arguing that the field of economics has developed an overreliance on fundamentally flawed models as well as misconceptions about risk and uncertainty.

In this episode, we discuss Radical Uncertainty, touching on Lord King’s motivations in writing the book, its core ideas, and the implications of his critique on the future of economic policymaking.

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Host: Sam Lee

Editor: Marko Petrovic

Gregory Zuckerman is a nonfiction author and special writer at The Wall Street Journal. Before joining the Journal, Zuckerman was managing editor of Mergers and Acquisitions Reports, a trade publication of Investment Dealers’ Digest, and the New York Post as a media reporter.

At the Journal, Zuckerman is an investigative reporter covering business and investing topics. He is a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award, the highest honor in business journalism. He regularly appears on CNBC, Fox News, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg Television, and more. Zuckerman’s works include The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters, and his latest book, A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine, covering mRNA vaccine development. A Shot to Save the World was longlisted for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.

In this episode, we hit a wide range of topics, starting with how Mr. Zuckerman wrote his book, and his experiences with the characters he writes about. We then discuss public policy and financing, and how the vaccine development process can be critiqued and updated. Finally, we talk about societal perception of science, and how it should change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine development process.

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Hosts: Sullivan Meyer and Neal Reddy

Design: Ryan Vuono

Editor: Marko Petrovic

Professor Sandro Galea is a physician and epidemiologist who is dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. His research is centered on the social factors that influence health and trauma, and his work is highly cited in the field of public health. Some of his most notable work relates to the ramifications of mass trauma after natural disasters and catastrophes, which his latest book, The Contagion Next Time addresses as it confronts the pivotal moment of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this interview, we start by discussing the concept of health itself. What qualifies as health? Are we too limited in our effort to make society healthier? We then move to Professor Galea’s scientific and moral critiques of public policy actions that according to him impact health negatively, from budgetary decisions to international relations. Despite Professor Galea’s critiques of public health policy, we end the interview on an optimistic note— Professor Galea observes that we are in an unprecedented position in history with regards to the medicine and wealth of our society, and with such tools in disposal, it is important to steer clear of pessimism.

This interview marks my last interview as the host of Policy Punchline. I will soon release another recording giving you an update about Policy Punchline’s future, but for now I just want to present to you the following conversation with Prema Gauranga Das.

Over the last three years with Policy Punchline, I’ve interviewed more than 150 guests, mostly public intellectuals, policy makers, journalists, investors… but this is my only interview with a monk – a Hindu monk.

Premji has been a resident monk at Sri Sri Radha Gopinath Temple in Mumbai with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (also known as ISKCON) for the last 20 years. Like many of his peers, Premji completed his Bachelors degree in engineering from the University of Pune, a top university in India, and subsequently had a 4-year stint at India’s largest auto manufacturing company. But he quit his job to become a monk and to explore a more fulfilling and purposeful lifestyle, after being inspired by the teachings of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, and His Holiness Radhanath Swami. Currently he is one of the research and implementation leads for ISKCON’s flagship project, the Temple of Vedic Planetarium, and is compiling his research on the Bhagavata Cosmology.

I conducted the interview in the winter of 2019, right before Covid hit the world. I went on a yoga and meditation trip to India with Princeton University’s Office of Religion Life, led by two fantastic mentors, Vineet and Angela, with a group of 15 students. We traveled for a month during Christmas vacation, visiting yoga institutes, temples, ashrams, and cultural sites. We were accompanied by Premji, who helped plan our trip and guide us through the country, and through many conversations he gradually became an important mentor.

I was truly fortunate to have met Premji. He answered my questions on the Hindu faith, life, and my confusion about my own path forward. He was almost like a beacon of light, using simple principles to help me reason through some of the most difficult philosophical and religious questions that had puzzled me over the years:

- Should we be pessimistic in light of the world’s unending sufferings?

- Have we made progress as a humanity?

- How flexible can one be with their spiritual and religious faiths?

- What does it mean to be guided by God? Does one have to be guided by God or some form of greater power?

- How do we control our desires? What does it mean to be happy?

- What is one’s destiny and how do we discover our true calling?

…

Premji and I recorded this conversation towards the end of my trip. We were in Rishikesh, a city on the Ganges river and home to the famous Beatles Ashram. Overseeing sunset on the foothills of the Himalayas, we sat along the Ganges river and chatted for three hours. Hence we named the episode “Satsang on the Ganges,” where the word “Satsang” refers to the idea of group discussions or informal gatherings in hope to better understand the Vedic philosophy –– or, in essence, together pursuing the Absolute Truth.

It’s never my goal to try to change people’s lives via this podcast –– that would be too condescending to think that I should do that –– but I would be honored if the following interview could open a small window for you to explore some of these ideas. You may reach out to Premji by emailing him at [email protected]. You may learn more about ISKCON via https://www.iskcon.org/ and https://iskconchowpatty.com/.

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 damage or age-related degeneration.

In “Do Our Minds Have to Decline With Age?”, we explore just that, diving into topics such as the neocortex and neocortical function, cell damage, and age-related deterioration. ‘Dying of old age’ is not a medical term; rather, it is a description of what happens when critical parts of the body fail. Theoretically, if all parts of the body can be kept ‘young’ and healthy, we might have a chance of extending life indefinitely. While we are a long ways off from that, current cutting-edge research in the field of cell grafting, like conducted at the Hebert Lab, might hold to key to help save failing organs.

Throughout this interview, we discuss the science behind the neocortex, a region of the brain responsible for higher-order brain functions such as motor function, sensory perception, and cognition. We also discuss cell transplantation and grafting, what aging truly means, and possible directions for future research. From his lab’s webpage, “In recent years, the mechanisms underlying how stem cells in the embryo generate the neocortex have become better understood. Armed with this knowledge, the Hébert Lab is developing stem cell transplantation approaches to regenerate adult neocortical tissue after age-related degeneration.” Finally, we discuss the ethics of these methods, such as the usage of embryonic stem cells, as well as the definition of self (Ship of Theseus – at what point does altering the human brain structure fundamentally alter the underlying human being?)

We hope that you enjoy listening to an episode about rethinking aging, something we often take for granted, and learning about the direction of future research in this field.

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 existential risks and long-term societal and ethical facets of new technology regarding human enhancement.

Existential risks are risks that deal with the end of something — in this case, the end of humanity and Earth-originating intelligent life. As Prof. Sandberg explains, the most dire of risks lead to a lot of interesting implications and there are many interesting links that bridge different risks. Understanding those linkages are interesting and useful in discovering what the risks are, and also what we can do about it. Risks are broadly classified into anthropogenic (in this sense, self-inflicted) and external (natural).

In this episode of Policy Punchline, we discuss both types of risks, and why we should really care. After all, there is a low probability of this kind of existential risk occurring in our lifetime, and we have a fairly resilient infrastructure already in place. As Prof. Sandberg points out, “you can motivate the badness of existential risk in quite a lot of ways, both consequentialist and non-consequentialist”. The conversation then turns to utilitarianism and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the thought process and awareness of the field. Animal welfare (including humans) is brought up, and also the subject of human enhancement. Technological enhancements seem inevitable in the future, and, going back to anthropogenic risks, how this affects the future of humanity is a nuanced topic.

We hope you enjoy listening to an episode on existential risks and utility, a subject that concerns all of us. The pandemic has brought increased attention to how vulnerable humans could actually be to unforeseen threats to our existence, and we hope this interview provokes thought with regards to the future of humanity.

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 recognized by Forbes magazine as one of the 100 best technology venture investors in the United States and named one of the 15 venture capitalists on Upside magazine’s “Elite 100” list of influential U.S. leaders in technology, finance, and business.

Peter started Sierra Ventures as a young investor with some wealthy families’ money –– “they should’ve never given someone like me money to manage,” joked Peter. But it was the age where “it was hard to not make money in venture investing” –– every fund started in Peter’s time had returned money to LPs; not a single fund lost money, in contrast to around a fourth of all bond funds back then collapsing given the Asian financial crises.

Peter bought 6% of stake in Intuit with a $2.5 million investment; now it’s a company with a market capitalization of around $145 billion –– you can do the math. This investment, along with many others, made Peter one of the most successful venture capitalists in the world over the last few decades.

We also ask Peter whether he sees us entering another period of great secular growth for technology. The sentiment amongst pro-tech, pro-growth investors seems to be that the hyper growth stocks (Snowflake, Coinbase, Shopify, Docusign, Twilio, Upstart, etc.) look expensive and many are currently unprofitable, but most have long runways, high margins, sticky customers, and steady revenues. If we value these companies on what they might look like 5 years from now, do most secular compounders still seem fairly valued?

Looking at the market environment today, Peter is very skeptical of the promises of SPACs. He said in his keynote address at Princeton GCEPS that the SPAC boom likely won’t end well because there is a lot of promotion, a lack of regulation, but fundamentally not that many great companies to acquire.

Peter thinks that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology are the future and certainly on the risk frontier, but we still don’t know which chain or project will eventually prevail, so the overall asset class is still a highly risky investment option.

A big proponent of SaaS (especially given how he’s one of the first investors that embraced this idea back in the early days), Peter also believes that we’re still at an early stage in exploring artificial intelligence and the good it could do for the world.

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.