Mission Statement

Who we are and why we do what we do

Policy Punchline is a fully student-run podcast show that promotes long-form dialogues on frontier ideas and urgent issues with scholars, policy makers, business executives, journalists, and entrepreneurs. 

Many may find it more convenient to listen to a 15-minute, highly edited podcast show that deals more in generalities and broad trends in the news. However, we find that the main benefit of listening to a long-form podcast (such as Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, Eric Weinstein, Ezra Klein, or Policy Punchline) is that it allows our guests to develop long trains of thoughts with nuances and subtleties that go well beyond the “bumper-sticker level complexities of legacy media,” as investor Eric Weinstein has satirized. Whether it’s a book discussion about a recent bestseller in economics, or a debate on moral philosophy or political science, it is much more difficult to have a nuanced, thought-provoking discussion within 15 minutes. 

Now, you may ask – “why should I spend an hour listening to Policy Punchline while there’s a flood of content available for my selection?” We set ourselves apart from other shows through the quality of our questions and the extensive amounts of research that go into each and every interview. On average, our team spends 20 hours preparing for each interview – researching into the topic, learning about our guest’s background and thought processes, writing questions, and developing a framework for the discussion. As a result, many of our guests have gone on record saying that the interview experience with Policy Punchline is much deeper and well-reasoned than the ones they’ve done on book tours or with legacy media outlets. In fact, even our name is somewhat ironic due to our commitment to long-form deliberation, beyond simple “punchlines.”

We are not simply an extracurricular club; we are a group of deeply curious students who grapple with these pressing issues every day in and outside of our classrooms. All of us have a true passion for intellectual debates, and we don’t limit our political or epistemological framework to familiar or comfortable views. We’re willing to ask the tough questions while drawing inspiration from the wide ideological spectrum of our guests.

We are confident and proud of our work, and we believe that our long-form episodes are the right way to engage with such powerful ideas. America's polarized today not simply because the Right and the Left are somehow "not talking to each other." One important factor is that in our highly fragmented information age, people are easily manipulated by clickbait advertisements, targeted political messages, pseudo-empiricist statistics, and a wide variety of noises – to the point that it’s extremely difficult to even sit with a thought and reflect on the merits of various arguments. 

At normal times, such concerns might be relegated to the side, but we now live in a tumultuous era where norms are shifting rapidly, where citizens are debating topics ranging from the merits of “cancel culture” to how we should reform capitalism. 

This is an age that requires social discourse conducive to thoughtful debate and organic progress, yet this project is hampered by the perceived optimization and maximization of information intake through web surfing instead of book reading. We used to have Abraham Lincoln debating his opponent on the topic slavery for three hours straight, and everyone went home and came back the next day to watch each side debating for another six hours in a row… Now, our presidential debates are reduced to 30-second responses; scientists have shifted their battleground to Twitter; and mind-boggling “innovations” like Blinkist have emerged that help you read the summary of a book in 3 minutes. Even at a higher education institution like Princeton, students are opting to get educated by Instagram posts than books…  Rather than accepting the false premise that people are incapable of appreciating and digesting long-form dialogues, we want to help change the environment for the better and provide a thoughtful alternative through this podcast. 

In the 160+ interviews we conducted in the past four years, we’ve talked to fascinating personalities from “techno-utopian” iconoclasts to those deeply rooted in the political and business establishment. Having this unique privilege and flexibility of being able to speak to people from all ideological and academic backgrounds, we hope to present an integrated conversation where you may learn about some of the most innovative ideas and bold positions in our world today. 

We sincerely hope that you’ll enjoy our conversations and let your mind wander beyond the “punchlines” to an exciting and open world. Thank you again for listening to Policy Punchline.