This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star

and the American people. And to search for the Our American Stories podcast the show where America is the star and the American people.

And to search for the Al American Stories podcast, go to the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts.

Our next storyteller is Tim Harford, an economist and best-selling author of 50 things that shape

the modern economy.

Here he is to tell the story about a few of those.

The iPhone has a very interesting lesson for us, I think.

I mean, I don't need to tell you how it changed the economy,

but I think where they came from is a very interesting lesson.

So this argument is made by an economist called Marianna Matzikato,

and she says, look, what is in an iPhone? You've got a touchscreen. You've got the solid state

hard drive. You've got the computer chips. You've got algorithms, particularly algorithms that

convert digital to analog and analog to digital. You've got GPS. You've got access to the

internet. You've got the cell phone structure. You've got all of that going on. Okay. These are the

building blocks that Steve Jobs put together to make this amazing invention. So who invented the

building blocks? And when you look at the history of it, very often they came from

governments, very often the American military, although not always. For example, the touchscreen

is a British government invention. It was invented at the Royal Radar establishment. So you look

at all these different inventions, and they all have these government or military origins, which is very striking, because a lot of people, myself included, like to sing the praises of private sector, innovation, the power of the entrepreneur, the creativity of the free market.

I'm all for that.

...