Know Your Enemy - Milton Friedman and the Making of Our Times (w/ Jennifer Burns)

Matt and Sam interview historian Jennifer Burns about her new biography of Nobel Prize-winning economist and libertarian intellectual Milton Friedman.

Duration: 1h 37m
Broadcast on: 03 Dec 2023
Audio Format: other

In this episode, Matt and Sam are joined by Stanford historian Jennifer Burns to discuss her new biography of Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist whose influence would reach far beyond the academy when, during his last decades, he became one of the most effective popularizers of libertarian ideas—in books, columns, and even a ten-part PBS program, Free to Choose. How did the son of Jewish immigrants in New Jersey come to hold the often radical ideas that made him famous? How does Friedman's variety of libertarianism differ from, say, that of Mises or Hayek? What made Friedman, unusually for the times, someone who valued the intellects and work of the women around him? And what should we make of Friedman now, as Trump and elements of the conservative movement and Republican Party supposedly jettison the "fusionism" of which Friedman's free markets were a part?

As mentioned in the episode's introduction, listeners might want to revisit episode 16 with economist Marshall Steinbaum for a broader, and more critical, look at the Chicago school.

Sources:

Jennifer Burns, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative (2023)

Jennifer Burns, Ayn Rand: Goddess of the Market (2009)

Naomi Klein, "40 Years Ago, This Chilean Exile Warned Us About the Shock Doctrine. Then He Was Assassinated." The Nation, Sept 21, 2016.

Tim Barker, "Other People’s Blood," n+1 , Spring 2019.

Pascale Bonnefoy, "50 Years Ago, a Bloody Coup Ended Democracy in Chile," NY Times, Sept 11, 2023.

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

All right, listeners, welcome to episode 83 of Know Your Enemy. I'm Matt Sitman, your podcast co-host, and I'm here as always with my great friend, Sam Adderbell. Hi, Matt. Hey, Sam. My voice almost cracked there for some reason. My voice sounds bad. It's cold season here in New York. Yeah. How are you doing today, Sam? Well, I'm all right. Excited for this episode? Good, meaty, meat and potato style, Know Your Enemy episode. That's right. Pull up a chair, friends, because this was, as you said, Sam, a meaty episode. And it was about a meaty book, which is just out November 14th that Jennifer Burns' big biography of Milton Friedman. It's called Milton Friedman, the last conservative that clocks in right around 500 pages. So compared to the J. Edgar Hoover bio of Beverly Gages, you know, this is a comparatively lighter reef. But for those who don't know, Jennifer, I remember, I was in grad school, I think, when her first book came out, which was on Ein Rand, it's called Goddess of the Market, Ein Rand and the American Right. So this book on Friedman of hers, this just out, it's kind of a continuation of her biographical explorations of the American Right and specifically more libertarian figures on the right. And of course, she's a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where Friedman's papers are, and an associate professor of history at Stanford University. And as our listeners will soon hear a very generous and intelligent guest who I was so impressed with just the synthesis and how much material she had mastered to write this book. Absolutely. I learned a lot about economics, especially the University of Chicago, their economics department around the time of the Great Depression. It was a little more complicated and nuanced than you might guess. Yeah, I think it's probably worth saying, I think this episode would pair really well for listeners, especially newer listeners. With an episode we did a long time ago with Marshall Steinbaum. It's called Windbag City, and it's about the Chicago School of Economics and the Law and Economics program in the Law School at University of Chicago. And that's, if any listeners know Marshall, it's a very withering takedown of sort of Friedman and Friedman-Eit thought, which is not really what this episode is. This is much more kind of in the style of, let's get a sense of who this person was and what he thought, and every once in a while sort of punctures some myths about him. So we'll put the Steinbaum episode in the show notes. And I think they might really pair really well together if you're a listener who hasn't heard that one. Yes, definitely Sam. We are critical of Friedman, especially towards the end of the episode. But I think our listeners would rather hear, how is Milton Friedman different as a kind of species of libertarian than say Hayek or Mises? Yeah.

Transcription truncated.

Matt and Sam interview historian Jennifer Burns about her new biography of Nobel Prize-winning economist and libertarian intellectual Milton Friedman.