Policy Punchline

Join hosts Maddie Feldman and Josh Stiefel as they sit down with Rachael Greenberg ‘14, Senior Vice President of Patient Acquisition and Retention at HarmonyCares and former Chief of Staff in the State Department’s Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs. This conversation follows a career that moves between government and the private sector, from Goldman Sachs and USAID to the White House, the COVID-19 response, and negotiations to reunite wrongfully detained Americans with their families. Rachael reflects on making consequential decisions with incomplete information, balancing speed with safeguards in an emergency, and centering human connection in the most extreme circumstances. This interview is part of the Policy Punchline podcast series. Supported by Princeton's Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance, the series aims to foster dialogue on critical public-policy issues, connecting listeners with leading experts from around the world.

What does it take to hold France's place at the centre of Europe's biggest crises? In this episode of Policy Punchline, Philippe Etienne, France's Ambassador to the United States from 2019 to 2023, joins Princeton students Alice McCarthy ’27 and Darden Shuman ’27 to discuss his memoir, Le Sherpa. A career diplomat for more than four decades, Etienne explains why he gave the book that title when his work went well beyond preparing summits for a head of state. The conversation starts with his unusual route from mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure into the diplomatic service. It follows him to Belgrade in the early 1980s, then to Moscow from 1991 to 1994, where he watched the Soviet Union collapse and the early career of Boris Nemtsov. From there we move to Brussels during the Eurozone crisis, to Berlin, and to the fault lines in Franco-German relations on economic policy, defence projects and energy. Etienne then recalls working with Emmanuel Macron on Donald Trump's first-term Washington, including the April 2018 state visit and the Iran deal that fell apart two weeks later. He describes the 2021 AUKUS recall, when Paris pulled its ambassador from Washington for the first time in nearly 250 years of relations, and how he worked to rebuild trust once he returned. We also ask what Europe can do about the war in Iran, how America changed during his posting, and what a NATO that functions without the United States would require, including Britain's role. We close by focusing on how to be an effective diplomat, how Germans, Russians and Americans each negotiate, and how he navigated those differences. This interview is part of the Policy Punchline podcast series. Supported by Princeton's Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance, the series aims to foster dialogue on critical public-policy issues, connecting listeners with leading experts from around the world. Join us as Philippe Etienne looks back on a career spent in the room for some of Europe's hardest decisions, and explains what comes next for the transatlantic alliance.

What does the history of the dollar reveal about power, sovereignty, and the way money really works? In this episode of Policy Punchline, Financial Times journalist and Princeton historian Brendan Greeley joins Princeton students Alice McCarthy ’27 and Maddie Feldman ’27 to discuss his forthcoming book, The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World’s Most Powerful Money. Greeley challenges the familiar story that the dollar began as an American invention. Instead, he traces its origins through Spanish silver, German mining towns, colonial ledgers, promissory notes, banking panics, and the private systems of credit that long preceded the modern Federal Reserve. The conversation explores why there is no single “dollar,” how different forms of money serve different people, and why monetary sovereignty is often far messier than governments or economists suggest. The discussion then turns to the present: crypto, stablecoins, America’s broken payments infrastructure, and the uncertain future of dollar dominance. Greeley argues that many supposedly new financial innovations are better understood as old banking problems in new packaging, and that the durability of the dollar depends not only on American power, but on the institutions, regulations, and trust that make money work. This interview is part of the Policy Punchline podcast series. Supported by Princeton’s Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance, the series aims to foster dialogue on critical public-policy issues, connecting listeners with leading experts from around the world. Join us as Brendan Greeley offers a sweeping and often surprising account of the dollar’s past, and what it can teach us about money, markets, and power today.

What does it take to repair a democracy from the inside? In this episode of Policy Punchline, Princeton neuroscientist and NJ-12 candidate Sam Wang joins Princeton students Maddie Feldman ’27 and Alice McCarthy ’27 to discuss his unusual path from brain science to election reform. Wang reflects on the common thread running through his work: using evidence to understand systems that shape people’s lives, whether in the brain, the ballot box, or Congress. The conversation begins with his research on neuroscience and autism before turning to his work founding the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, where he has used data, law, and statistical analysis to challenge distorted electoral maps and defend fair representation. Wang also discusses his run for Congress in New Jersey’s 12th District. We discuss New Jersey’s political system, including Wang’s role as an expert witness in the lawsuit that helped dismantle the state’s county line ballot system. This interview is part of the Policy Punchline podcast series. Supported by Princeton’s Julius Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance, the series aims to foster dialogue on critical public-policy issues, connecting listeners with leading experts from around the world. Join us as Sam Wang offers a scientist’s lens on American democracy, and a reformer’s blueprint for how to fix it.

[Recorded March 5, 2026] Representing New Jersey’s 16th Legislative District while continuing his work at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, State Sen. Andrew Zwicker brings a dual perspective on how frontier research translates into real-world policy. Join hosts Maddie Feldman and Alex Tseng for a conversation about a plasma physicist-turned lawmaker working at the intersection of science, energy policy, and public service. In this episode, we explore how scientific expertise shapes political decision-making, from New Jersey’s role as one of the most concentrated innovation hubs in the world to the challenges of building a clean energy economy. Zwicker reflects on the promise and politics of fusion energy, the realities of state-level policymaking, and what the strategies he’s learned about political communication on the campaign trail vis-à-vis promoting long-term scientific investment.