This is the reason interview with Nikolespi. Thanks for listening. Was Milton Friedman the most

important libertarian of them all? That's part of the conversation I have with today's guest

Stanford historian Jennifer Burns, who's written a masterful and definitive new biography of the Nobel Prize

winner. Without reservation, I recommend that you check out her new book, Milton Friedman,

The Last Conservative. It's as good or better as her previous book, which was called Goddess

of the Market and was about Ein Rand. Burns is a great writer and a great

historian who covers a lot of territory that anybody, you know, listening to anything reason does

is going to be very interested in. Milton Friedman was arguably not just the most influential

free market economists of the 20th century, but the central figure in building the broad,

political, and intellectual coalition that successfully challenged Keynesian economics and the

top-down rule of experts in so many aspects of our lives. I talked with Burns about Friedman's

conceptual and methodological breakthroughs in economics, his way ahead

of his time collaboration with female economists like Anna Schwartz and his wife Rose, his role in

popularizing free market economics through his columns in Newsweek and the TV series Free to Choose,

his controversial engagements with politicians ranging from Richard Nixon to Augusto

Pinochet, and his role in ending the military draft and championing school choice.

We also talk about Burns' intellectual history and whether or not Rand and Friedman are

connected in a particular way other than that she wrote about both of them.

This episode was taped at the Reason Speak Easy, a monthly unscripted conversation that happens

in New York City with outspoken defenders of free thinking and heterodoxy.

It also doubles as a live taping of the Reason interview with Nicholas B podcast.

Go to reason.com slash events to get information about the next speakeasy and all of our

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