Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover

Institution. Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and

find links down there information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives

with every episode we've done going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econtalk.org. We'd

love to hear from you.

Today is July 27th 2021 and my guest is journalist and author Nicholas Wabshot. His latest book is

Samuel Sin Friedman, the battle over the free market. He was last here in October of 2011,

discussing his book Canes Hayek. I want to thank Plantronics for providing today's guest with

the Blackwire 5220 headset. Nicholas, welcome back to econtalk.

They've come to be here, Russ. Always good to talk to you.

Let's start with what these two men, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman had in common.

Yes, they, it's extraordinary. Although they were the greatest rivals on earth,

as if they were twins separated at birth. They were within a couple of years of each other.

They both had very similar backgrounds. They were both Jewish, but neither of them practiced Judaism

in a serious way as they grew up. But that civilized bubble was surrounded them always. They

wrote, they understood each other intimately. They went to the same university. Samuelson was a

precocious child and although he was two years younger than Milton, he was in the same year as Milton.

So they literally shared the same class. And they headed off into the great world together with

both. You'd imagine identical views of the world, but in fact they had very sharply different views

of the world. One turned left, one turned right. How did they get along? And of course, talk about

how they were in the public eye. Each were alternating weekly columns at Newsweek for a long time.

...